Book the Thirteenth: The Torturous Triumph
by abfiaj
Summary: I cannot begin to fathom why any person would view the final chapter in the lives of the Baudelaire orphans, unless, of course, you are interested in reading the happy thing that occurs at the end of Chapter 7
1. Chapter 1

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

Book the Thirteenth

The Torturous Triumph

To Beatrice

My heart burst into flame when we met.

Right afterwards, you did.

Dear Reader,

Finales are often things you will not want to read. Many times, finales reveal things about the characters that it is better off not knowing at all. The only possible reason you could have for reading the final chapter in the misfortunes of the Baudelaires is that you, like myself at this very moment, are trapped and only have a short amount of time before the police will track you down at last and bring you in for deeds that you know you have never done in your lifetime.

Sometimes you might find finales to contain things such as self-sustaining hot air mobile homes, underwater catalogs, mysterious reappearances, and a very small rock, although I doubt very much that you would be interested in such a book.

This novel is the most dreadful out of all of the thirteen chapters of the Baudelaires' lives, and I hope that as you see their story wind down and die, you will not wind down and die along with it.

With all due respect,

Lemony Snicket

Chapter One

If you have ever heard the tedious childhood story "The Tortoise and the Hare," then you are probably familiar with the famous poet Aesop. Aesop was an ancient Greek poet who wrote over five hundred fables in his lifetime. He created yarns such as "The Fisher and the Little Fish" and "The Cat and the Birds," both of which discuss animals that experienced some sort of unfortunate event, or at least, almost had one thrust upon them. In the story of the fisher and the little fish, the fisher catches a scrawny little fish instead of a big fish. The little fish is frightened at first, but then promises the fisherman that if he lets the fish go, it will return a few weeks later, all fattened up. The fisherman, however, decides to keep the little fish so that he can sear it to perfection, a phrase which here means "broil it until it tastes good," rather than taking the risk of the fish not following through with its promise. The story of the cat and the birds, however, tells the story of a cat who is hungry for birds. He hears tell of a group of birds in an aviary who are not feeling very well. The cat opens his disguise kit and poses as a doctor with a large top hat and a handbag. He knocks on the door and asks of the birds' health, to which one of the birds replies, "We shall do very well when we've seen the last of you." As you can very well imagine, Aesop was soon beheaded by a group of angry villagers.

The things that we respect most about Aesop are his morals. In every one of his fables, there is always a lesson to be learned by the vertebrates of volunteers foolishly dissuaded in the story. The moral of "The Fisher and the Little Fish" is "Be content with what you have, for it is unsure if anything better will come along." The moral of "The Cats and the Birds" is "A villain may disguise himself, but he will not deceive the wise." However, there is one other important moral by Aesop that we should all remember, which states "A crust in comfort is better than a feast in fear." After spending days and days of researching the works of Aesop and other Greek poets, I am finally able to understand what the meaning of this moral is. "A crust in comfort" is referring to having meager portions of food in the best of situations, and "a feast in fear" refers to a small blessing while the natural world has pushed nothing but pain and misery into your current situation. So, what Aesop is trying o get across is that it is better to be starving in the most relaxing of situations rather than being full in dire moments such as the one that the Baudelaire orphans were currently experiencing.

Right now, the three Baudelaires would have given anything to be following Aesop's principle, but it was not so. A phrase that would be proper to describe their situation would be "a crust in fear." The crust was the horror that was haunting their very minds as they were sailing along the sea. Violet, the eldest Baudelaire, was considering her recent actions in escaping from the Hotel Denouement, where all of the volunteers and villains were clamoring around to capture them. Klaus, the middle child, was considering his recent actions in assisting the sailboat he was in descend from the roof, where he and his siblings had just abandoned a fellow volunteer. Sunny, the youngest of the three, was considering her recent actions in assisting igniting the fire that was now engulfing the hotel into flame.

The main reason for all of these simultaneous and unfortunate occurrences was, of course, Count Olaf, who had cornered the Baudelaire orphans yet again just as they thought that justice would be served. He was indirectly, but mostly directly, responsible for all of the deaths that recently happened at the hotel, and even though the Baudelaires were the ones who had accidentally killed a man who had been taking care of them, it was Count Olaf who had been the reason for the killing in the first place.

"At last! At last! Ha! You're in my clutches at last! Ha! I've been waiting so long for this moment! Ha! Now you have nobody to protect you! Ha!" yelled the Count in triumph. "You orphans think you're so smart! Ha! Well, look at your current situation, my dears! Ha! All of your pesky inventing and reading and biting landed you here, in my clutches once again! Ha! It's like I'm seeing things that I recall from the past, or, as the French put it, my _vu jade_."

"It's _déjà vu_," corrected Klaus. He was still all aquiver with curiosity for all of the unsolved mysteries he had experienced, along with his perpetual, a word which here means "never-ending," fear of Count Olaf, but it was not enough to stop him defining words.

"Shut up, orphan, and row!" cried the Count. "Ha! We're going to pick up a few things first, and then, once I have everything I need, I can flatten V.F.D. like a spatula flattening a pancake! Ha!"

"I do wish you would stop doing that, Olaf," Violet groaned. "It's much harder to concentrate on rowing with you constantly laughing like that." Violet was getting a headache due to Count Olaf's new chortle, a phrase which here means "villainous laugh that tends to give people migranes, which is a word that means 'headaches,'" which he had first shown off to the Baudelaires early that morning.

"I don't care about your damn head! Now stop chatting and row!" screamed the count. Of course, we all know that profanity is something we should never use, but the Baudelaires were unfortunately accustomed to Olaf swearing since he had disguised himself as an assistant to Dr. Montgomery Montgomery, a herpetologist who was only known to his closest acquaintances by that name. "And baby, why aren't you doing any damn thing?"

"Tired," Sunny moaned. She was incredibly exhausted, as they hardly had any time to sleep that morning before they were all escorted to a trial of conviction that failed miserably.

"You may have suggested to start the fire, baby, but that doesn't mean you can start gibbering to me about being tired! Ha! Why, I had absolutely no sleep last night, and look how much I accomplished!" declared the Count with a sort of grandeur in his voice, a phrase which here means "showing off as if he were performing another one of his dreadful plays."

The Baudelaires turned to look at one another in misery. They knew, of course, that all Olaf had accomplished during the night was killing Dewey Denouement, a sub-sub-librarian who the Baudelaires had taken a liking to. Dewey had just come in contact with the Baudelaire orphans that very morning, but to the children, it felt as if they had known him for quite a while. Dewey had been the third of the three Denouement triplets, the other two's names being Frank and Ernest. Whenever the Baudelaires had encountered Dewey's two unfathomable brothers, they could not tell which was which, no matter what kind of observations they made.

"Where do you think we're going?" Klaus asked Violet, his face lined with sweat from the heat of the smoke and fire.

"I don't know," Violet replied, equally sweaty, "but we're bound to stop rowing sooner or later. Olaf did mention he had to go pick up a few things, so maybe we can escape when we get to wherever this boat is headed."

"Poidar," Sunny said, which was her unique way of saying, "I don't think it would be the best of ideas to abandon Count Olaf."

"Why not?" Violet and Klaus asked in harmony, a phrase which here means "simultaneously," instead of "in a melodic sort of chorus that makes a sound pleasant to hear."

"Eye," Sunny replied, which meant "We should keep an eye on him, in case he is plotting any further treachery, so that we can stop him from doing any more acts of villainy."

"Like finding the sugar bowl," Klaus said. His siblings nodded in agreement. All three of them knew that this special sugar bowl contained a secret that V.F.D. was as eager to keep hidden as Olaf was eager to find it. Klaus had just recently deduced that Dewey had tricked everyone into thinking that it would land inside the laundry room of the Hotel Denouement, while it really had fallen into the underwater catalog that contained enough evidence to put Olaf and the rest of his villainous cohorts in prison forever.

"Stop whispering to yourselves at once and keep rowing! I haven't got time to stop this boat just so you can discuss your orphan affairs!" cried Count Olaf. "Once I succeed in achieving what I am sailing to achieve, then I am going after every single volunteer who has ever stood in my way, including that ridiculous Snicket sibling!"

Violet leaned in to her siblings to murmur, "Which one?" The Baudelaires were well acquainted with two Snicket siblings named Jacques and Kit. They had met Jacques in the Village of Fowl Devotees, where he was set up as being Count Olaf and ended up getting murdered by the count himself. The orphans had only recently met Kit Snicket, when she took them in a taxi from Briny Beach to the Hotel Denouement. However, there was a third Snicket sibling whom they had never met before, and the only frame of reference, a phrase which here means "picture of him," they had of him was a picture of him on a page of the Snicket file that Klaus had kept safe and hidden inside his commonplace book. The orphans had yet to encounter this third Snicket sibling, who happens to be a man very close to my work, and who I know recently developed a habit of smoking in order to communicate with his sister to let her know that the volunteer she was out to retrieve had been, in fact, murdered, along with a crewmate of his who had just recently given up his job in a sinister lumber factory. Since Jacques was dead and Kit was somewhere far away, the Baudelaires could only conclude that Olaf was referring to the third Snicket sibling.

Just then, Violet felt Count Olaf grab her by the collar so he could look her in the eye. His horrid breath was "Listen, you little brat! I am extremely bad-tempered right now. Stop talking with your idiot siblings this instant! If you so much as row slowly, I swear I will beat you incredibly long and hard, so help me God!"

The phrase "so help me God" is indeed a curious one, for it has multiple meanings to it. It is commonly used by people of many religious faiths, who use it when they are delivering their prayers to God. One other usage of the phrase is to make things seem harder than they really are, like in the sentence "Give me a hand, would you, L? Hold my cigar for me. These stacks of newspapers are really heavy, so help me God!" But when Count Olaf said, "so help me God," he was not referring to a figure worshipped in synagogues and churches or a heavy stack of newspapers that had tiny woodchips all over them. His usage of the phrase "so help me God" was used in a way of expressing frustration over something. Certainly at least once in our lives we may find occasion to use the phrase "so help me God" but a time when you are traveling through a sinister sea, using spatulas as oars and having a very dangerous fungus sealed in a helmet located at the head of the ship is a very inappropriate time to use the phrase "so help me God."

"Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes! I was gloating!" shouted the count in a theatrical tone. He walked off to the other side of the boat and started cheering and whooping and celebrating over his torturous triumph. The Baudelaires took this opportunity to their advantage to speak with each other.

"Where do you think we're going?" Violet asked.

Klaus opened his commonplace book and consulted one of the pages. "Maybe Count Olaf is going to look for the sugar bowl. As long as we don't tell him that it is inside the underwater catalog, the secrets of V.F.D. will be safe forever."

"Uncat," Sunny replied, which meant something along the lines of "We need to get to that catalog before Olaf does."

"You're right, Sunny. If we can find the sugar bowl, we might be able to find out why it's so important," said Violet.

"And we can call in the proper authorities to clear our names and take Olaf away forever," Klaus replied.

"If we're lucky," Sunny mentioned, using a phrase that her brother and sister used when the Baudelaires stayed at Prufrock Preparatory School.

If you are somewhat of a dunce, then you will probably assume that the Baudelaires' assumptions are, assumably, correct. Just like the assumptions that the orphans assumed at Prufrock Prep, these assumptions are assumed to be assumably wrong. However, fate has a way of twisting itself into shapes that are considered freakish, like a contortionist who was currently trapped along with her two coworkers in a hotel that was currently burning to the ground. There are people lucky enough in the world who have not had to deal with things such as horrible and talentless villains, venomous reptiles, harsh storms, heavy lumber products, tiring gym classes, dark elevator shafts, angry villagers, conniving cranioectomies, ferocious lions, evil cohorts with evil facial hair, submarines shaped like octopi, and unfathomable people in an unfathomable hotel. But the Baudelaire orphans are not those sorts of people. They are the kind of people who are unlucky enough in the world who have had to deal with things such as horrible and talentless villains, venomous reptiles, harsh storms, heavy lumber products, tiring gym classes, dark elevator shafts, angry villagers, conniving cranioectomies, ferocious lions, evil cohorts with evil facial hair, submarines shaped like octopi, and unfathomable people in an unfathomable hotel. As you can probably guess, things will most definitely not get any better than that in this fickle finale.

But the Baudelaire orphans did not know that. They were hoping for a happy ending to their fable. I am sure that even Aesop would have a hard time choosing a moral for the story of the Baudelaires. However, after discussing morals and fables with my closest associates, I am able to safely conclude that almost all of his morals can be applied to the Baudelaires' lives. The moral of "The Fisher and the Little Fish," which, if you recall, is "Be content with what you have, for it is unsure if anything better will come along." For right now, the Baudelaire children were forced to be content with their miserable situation on Count Olaf's sailboat, and had to wait until something better was to come along, which would happen in a short while. The moral of "The Cat and the Birds," which, if you recall, is "A villain may disguise himself, but he will not deceive the wise." The Baudelaires, over the course of their lives, had seen Olaf wearing a variety of disguises. But when I speak of disguises, I do not necessarily mean only disguises that you wear on the outside, but also ones that Olaf used to fool people after the usage of outer disguises. He adapted a disguise that made people think that he was a kind, caring, and trustworthy person, and tricked the same people into thinking that the Baudelaire orphans were villains, arsonists, and murderers.

However, there is one moral of Aesop's that is basically a summary of the Baudelaires' lives, which is "Misfortunes springing from ourselves are the hardest to bear." The Baudelaires' misfortunes did not spring from without, but from within. They did not start their series of unfortunate events, but they actually helped spread it themselves. The orphans relied too much on the adults in their lives to protect them that sometimes they did not think to attempt to save themselves. True, the Baudelaires were charming and resourceful, and they did save themselves sometimes, the three of them were at fault, a phrase which here means "were not always successful in defending themselves." Almost none of this was the orphans' fault, but fate has its way of causing you to do things that you never wanted to do in the first place. And although the Baudelaire orphans never wanted to be in the current situation in the first place, they felt as if the first place, the last place they wanted to be, was the only place that they could feel safe until they were able to have their feast in comfort at last.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Pity is a very strange thing to feel for another person. When you pity someone, you don't feel as if you are above them, but you feel that the person that you are pitying is somewhat worse off than you are, even if you know that your experiences have been incredibly unfortunate in their own right. Pity is often given to people, for instance, who hide out in suspicious subway stations and have to borrow charcoal and old newspapers in order to continue writing the stories that they have vowed to keep researching for the rest of their lives. However, pity is even stranger than strange when someone is feeling pity for someone else who has been incredibly cruel and horrible to them. This being true, most people would probably not want to give very much pity to their local dentist. If you have read the other tales in the trials and tribulations, a phrase which here means "pain and suffering," in the Baudelaires' lives, then you are probably well aware that the Baudelaires have been on the receiving end of pity from practically every noble person they had ever met, and have been the bearers of pity to people who they had met during their travels whose lives have been as dismal and distraught as theirs, such as the Quagmires, whose father used to be a zookeeper, and the Snickets, whose father passed on his job at a sinister lumbermill to his youngest son right before his untimely death.

At this moment, however, only one Baudelaire had that familiar feeling of pity for others, while her two older siblings were busy getting a good night's sleep in a horrible situation, which was their most current feast in fear. Sunny was wide awake, and was still haunted with what she and her siblings had just discovered at the Hotel Denouement from multiple volunteers and villains. All that she and her siblings knew of it was that it involved their parents, poison darts, a long and dramatic play called _La Forza del Destino_, and Count Olaf. She was still a little unsure as to what the entire behind-the-scenes story was, but all the same, Sunny felt that there was more to Count Olaf than meets the eye, or rather, _his_ eye, or eyes. Had I been on board that boat for the second time in my life, I would have picked up Sunny, sat her down on my lap, made sure Count Olaf could not have heard us, eaten my last granola bar with strawberry filling, and tried to talk some sense into her. Through her prism of experience, it would be expected that she would be a little more aware that Count Olaf was an evil villain who would stop at nothing to steal their fortune and the fortunes of many other allegedly innocent families, and would kill them and anyone who stood in his way once he succeeded in his goals. However, Sunny thought that there was something beneath all of Olaf's treachery and wickedness, and that it was possible to open that treasure chest deep inside of him.

This is, of course, pure baloney, a phrase which means "complete nonsense," rather than "a fresh Italian deli meat that has been hand-picked to perfection." As you and I both know, Count Olaf is a horrible villain who has committed murder, arson, murderous arson, and arsonous murder. Sunny, of course, was at an age when a person tends to be somewhat naive, a word which here means "simple-minded," but her mind was set on spying on Count Olaf to pick up any signs of nobility in his mind, whether he liked it or not.

"Bond," Sunny said to herself, a word which here means "I need to be quiet if I am going to spy on Count Olaf," even though there was no one listening nearby.

Sunny approached the Count's cot and peeked through the window of the cabin door. As she very well knew, eavesdropping is a very impolite thing to do, but if used appropriately, such as the way Violet had eavesdropped on Count Olaf, Mr. Poe, and a hook-handed person at Uncle Monty's home, then eavesdropping can be considered a somewhat acceptable thing. For at this point, Sunny was eavesdropping on Count Olaf in the simple hope of exposing his nobility where no one else could see it, but all she could see was Count Olaf crying.

"It's not fair!" weeped the count. "It's just not fair!"

The villainous man was weeping into his cold, unkempt, and filthy hands. His eyes were red and swelling, and his eyebrow was sopping wet with tears and sweat. For Sunny to see such a horrendous display was an incredibly horrible sight for any volunteer to ever see, which I am semi-horrified and semi-glad to say is a sight that no other volunteer before or after her had ever seen of any villainous person.

With his hands shaking as fiercely as if he was in the middle of an earthquake, Count Olaf picked up a picture of two people whom I never had the acquaintance of meeting personally, but had known by reputation, a phrase which here means "well aware of the villainous things these two had committed during their lives." The count was talking to the people as if they were still alive and kicking, and not, as the expression goes, dead as a doornail.

"Oh, how I wish I could leap back to that day," the count sobbed. "I would leap like no man has ever leapt before, to stop those ridiculous volunteers before it was too late! Oh, I'd rather do that then have the sugar bowl! Why did I have to suffer like this? My God, I'm starting to sound just like the orphans! Ha! If I keep this up, I might turn into one of them! Ha!"

Although Sunny was hearing Count Olaf saying "Ha!" like he was doing before, he was crying it with much less enthusiasm in his voice, as if he was not as into his villainous laugh as was assumably presumed of him. It is possible, of course, for fads, a word which here means "things that are popular for a short amount of time," to fade out, but Count Olaf was a horrid and despicable villain. He threatened the Baudelaire orphans with a long and sharp knife, he threw Aunt Josephine to the Lachrymose Leeches, he helped hypnotize Klaus with the assistance of an ophthalmologist who did not used to be an ophthalmologist but was in fact a former waitress who had been tricked into letting a volunteer into a café so they could retrieve a certain sweetly-covered secret, he kidnapped the Baudelaires' best friends, he used a monocle to fool a guardian of theirs, he set up the orphans with murder, he burned down a hospital, he kidnapped Sunny, he threatened them with a bread knife, he commandeered a suspicious submarine, and he had adopted a villainous laugh. All of these things he committed were done once, and then the count gave it up in pursuit of things that drew his attention. But crying over it is a completely different story. I have never really bothered to find out anything about the history of Count Olaf beyond what I know, but I know that even a villainous person needs to have a good cry, even if their crying is simulated in order to trick a few volunteers into feeling sympathetic for them. However, at this point, all Sunny could do was spy on this horrible villain.

"I guess what they say is right. Perhaps I am a bit too… wait a minute. What am I saying?" Olaf recovered with more enthusiasm. "Let's list all of the good things I've done. I… um, provided shelter for a group of feckless ingrates. I was able to avoid persecution for deeds beyond my control by securing a secret document that people have died for. Hmm, maybe I'm much more noble than I thought! Although I suppose I was wrong to…"

But Sunny didn't hear what Count Olaf was wrong to do, which happened to be one in hundreds of wicked acts that the count had neglected to mention. For at that moment, Sunny's hand accidentally nudged the door, which made it open just very slightly. And of course, any door that has not been oiled by the proper carpenter tends to creak, and a creaking sound from a door that has not been oiled by the proper carpenter is just the thing that can cut off a villain and make him stare at a young little infant who was spying on him from the other side of the door.

"You!" the count snarled, quickly throwing the picture away and wiping his eyes. "What are you still doing up, little orphan? You're supposed to be sleeping with your pathetic siblings until I come to shake you awake!"

"Why cry?" Sunny asked, although I suppose it could have been a demand, for she was asking the villain with a certain strength in her voice.

Count Olaf wasn't expecting Sunny to ask him anything, and so his shiny, shiny eyes briefly started to water again. But he quickly realized what he was doing, dabbed his eyes, and continued to growl at her. "Because I was just cutting an onion to make some curry! And every Tom, Dick, and Harry will tell you that cutting onions makes you cry!"

The phrase "every Tom, Dick, and Harry" is a curious one, especially when it is used metaphorically. Although the phrase refers to _every_ one of them, I recall from a time long ago when there was one set of triplets named Tom, Dick, and Harry, and some time after the schism had taken place, all three of them died, but Dick was the only one who had triplets of his own who he left behind. But used metaphorically, the phrase "every Tom, Dick, and Harry" means something along the lines of "a way of referring to ordinary people in general." Of course, it is very rare to find an ordinary person in such a strange and confusing world, which is why the phrase "every Tom, Dick, and Harry" is not a very common one.

"Liar," retorted Sunny, in a voice braver than I would have confronted Count Olaf with.

"Don't call me a liar!" Olaf leaned in to Sunny and started to speak in her ear. "Listen to me, you little brat! Let me tell you something that you should remember for the rest of your pathetic little life!" whispered the count in an incredibly hoarse voice. "You cannot rely on anyone in the world! _Anyone!_ Oh, sure, you could try to trust your siblings! But when it comes down to the end, then they won't stay with you! I used to think that my siblings were there for me, but as it turned out, they betrayed me in the end! Ever since I became an orphan like you two, I've set my mind on becoming an individual practioneer. Oh, sure, sometimes I foolishly trusted my associates, but I never really cared what they said or did. The only reason I trusted that foolish fashionable woman was so that I could avoid capture! Do you think I cared when those two powdery women asked me where their sibling was? Do you think I cared to tell them that their ridiculous shape of a sibling died in the fire, rather than abandoning us when we were at the hospital? You can't care about anything but yourself in this world except yourself! And don't think anything different!"

There is a famous saying that goes "The advice of an enemy is not to be trusted," which is derived from one of the morals taken from one of the fables of an infamous Greek poet. Obviously, its meaning is that if an enemy offers you advice, never trust their word for anything. Count Olaf is not typically the sort of person who it would be wise to get advice from, and Sunny was not dumb enough to even think in the slightest about taking advice from her foul-smelling foe. She knew that it is rather important in the world to trust others, although this cannot be true for every situation. At the Hotel Denouement, Sunny and her two siblings were unable to trust a great many people, from an obnoxious boss who had unknowingly partnered himself with a volunteer way, way back, to two unfathomable managers who had acted so ambiguously, a phrase which here means "double-meaningly." Like I have experienced multiple times, it is often unpleasant to be distrusted by other volunteers who are not very sure of your true identity, when you are really speaking to them in code the entire time without them realizing it.

Sunny, right now, did not trust Count Olaf at all. She could trust her siblings to look after her, like they trusted her too. When she was trapped inside a cage in the tower of Count Olaf's old and dingy home, Violet had been able to get her down, and get them out of the count's clutches in the process. When the Baudelaires were trapped at the bottom of a dark, dank elevator, Violet and Klaus had trusted Sunny to climb up the soft stone all the way to the top, where she had been able to bring a few items back for them that came in handy much later. When Sunny had been trapped on the top of Mortmain Mountains with Count Olaf and two other associates whom he had been close acquaintances with since he was born, her siblings had rescued her and together, they escaped down a toboggan that was worn away from the last time it was used by three siblings who escaped in the same way as them. Now, more than ever, Sunny knew it was important to trust her siblings, if they were going to be able to locate the underwater catalog, prove their innocence, have Count Olaf taken away for the rest of his life, and, most importantly, find a safe place for them to finally end their perpetual cycle of misfortune at last.

Sunny stared into Count Olaf's eyes, which were shining bright, and Count Olaf stared into Sunny's eyes, which seemed to have just a little bit of shine in them from the reflection of Count Olaf's eyes. For one second, the two of them felt some sort of a mutual agreement to their situations. Everyone in the world has experienced a tiny bit of misfortune in their lives, and for one instant, everything between the infant volunteer and the ill-mannered villain became clear to one another. But then Olaf regained his senses and his face turned back to one of pure loathing.

"Now, let's go, orphan. You need to get your rest and so do I. Let's walk back to your bunk," said the count without raising his voice in the slightest.

"Uno momento," Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of "Just a minute."

"Argh! What now, orphan?" asked the count, his voice rising with every syllable.

"Tell _Forza del Destino_," Sunny stated flat-out, a word which here means "bluntly."

Count Olaf picked up Sunny so that his arm was within range of her head, but instead of yelling at her or hitting her, the count bit his tongue— not really, of course –and led her down the hall towards her bunk on the other side of the boat.

"You know, orphan," said the count, as they walked, "you and I are not all that different. Look at us. I committed murder, and so have you. I burned things down, and so have you. I disguised myself up to avoid capture, and so have you. I let down the hopes of many volunteers who thought I could amount myself to something noble, and so have you. You would be surprised how many hypocrites you will find in the world."

The word "hypocrite" is a word which means "someone who does certain things that they have told you not to do themselves." It is most confusing to understand why somebody calls someone else a hypocrite, especially if the people telling you so are villains and arsonists. For instance, if an employer of yours at a center dealing with rhetorical advice tells you not to fight fire with fire, but then ends up trying to create his own little explosion simply because of the tiny piece of wickedness in his heart, then he can be called a hypocrite. But to hear a horrible and disgusting villain use the term "hypocrite" to describe each and every noble person in the entire world just is so hypocritical for Count Olaf to say, hypocritically, of course.

"Riddick," Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of "That is absolutely ridiculous, Olaf."

"You know, orphan, it is so hard to answer you when you don't speak in a way that I understand," Olaf said.

"Ridiculous," Sunny corrected.

"That's better," replied the count. "Now, to reply to your ridiculous reply to my suggestions, it is not ridiculous. Can't you believe what I am saying?"

"Lol," Sunny said, meaning something like "If you weren't such a despicable villain, then I would laugh out loud at you."

"Oh, shut up, orphan!" Olaf groaned. "You know, if I was not really such a vengeful person, I would have never kept you alive!"

"Venge?" Sunny asked incredulously, which meant something along the lines of "You have been chasing after us for revenge?"

Olaf immediately clasped his hand over his mouth, as if to prevent any more revealing secrets from escaping from it, like three triplets escaping from a swarm of eagles led by a villainous man and his scientific sister. He put down Sunny and said, "You know what? Nothing matters anymore. And in a few short hours, when Thursday arrives, I will have my plan put into action at last! And by the time the day is done, there will be no more volunteers left on earth! Ha!"

Olaf regained his old spark, a phrase which here means "reverted back to his villainous laugh," and barked, "Walk back to your room, baby! And if I catch you sneaking around my ship again, then I am not going to be so generous!"

The count turned around and walked back to his cabin, but not before Sunny spotted his eyes starting to tear yet again. She walked back to her cabin and started to wonder what Count Olaf was talking about.

"Trauma," Sunny thought to herself, meaning something like "Count Olaf has a few emotional problems of his own, I guess."

"Who's there?" someone asked.

"Olaf?" Sunny asked back, wondering who in the world it could be.

"Of course not. Friend or foe?" asked the figure.

Sunny paused and thought. The last time she had heard someone ask the question "Friend or foe?" she was about to board a submarine piloted by a strange-speaking volunteer. Of course, Sunny found it ridiculous to believe that this figure was indeed Captain Widdershins, as he was dead, but instead walked a little closer to get a better view of this figure. He was a short, chubby man with a round red face, but this round red face was concealed by a black mask that was covering his entire face, and he was wearing a hat which is very frequently designated as a bowler hat. He was holding a notepad in one hand, and a pencil in the other. He saw Sunny through the eyeholes in his mask, and smiled –or at least, that's what it looked like through the material– at the youngest Baudelaire, and started to speak again.

"Sunny Baudelaire, is it? Well, it is so nice to see you again. Please do not be alarmed. I am a fellow volunteer," he explained.

Sunny looked at the man a little uneasily, for she knew that just because someone says something does not make it true. For instance, when someone tells you that they are a sibling of an associate of yours, you might not be inclined to believe it at first. Only when they present you with actual evidence can you actually believe what they are saying, like when they present you with several books that deal with large bodies of water that you left secret notes in for their sibling, who in turn, passed it to her. Sunny could not really trust what this man said, so she continued to listen, but she remained cautious.

"Are you familiar with the author John Godfrey Saxe?" he asked.

Sunny gasped in surprise. The man, of course, was quoting one of many great American poets whose stories the Baudelaires' father had constantly read aloud to them, and the last time they heard of it was early that morning, when a strange taxi driver had made a distinct reference to the work of Mr. Saxe, but Sunny and her siblings did not know whether they had made the right decision by leaving him or not. Now, there was another man who was trying to get Sunny to trust her.

"I don't suppose you trust me very much, Sunny," said the masked man, who was looking very worried about something. "That is quite understandable. I remember the look on your face as I saw you departing the house on Lousy Lane. I wish I could have been of more help to you and your siblings, but certain circumstances have forced me to remain in hiding, for there are those who think me dead, and would like me to stay that way. And I can assure you that I am a volunteer. Would any villain be so kind and understanding of your situation? I know you did not trust either of the Squalors when you stayed with them on Dark Avenue. They never seemed to care, even though you just found out that Jerome was a volunteer. Would any villainous or ignoble person care about you? Would any villainous or noble person be in contact with others who have been so very concerned with your situation?"

"No," Sunny said truthfully, as she finally walked closer to the volunteer and hugged him. She and her siblings had thought that every noble person in the world would fail them, but for some reason, she felt comfortable and warm around this man, as if he was her guardian or relative.

"Now, come with me, Sunny," said the volunteer abruptly, a word which here means "right after they hugged." "There is something I would like to show you."

He motioned for Sunny to follow her, and she did so. As they walked through the ship, Sunny started to wonder how in the world this man was able to sneak aboard this vessel without Count Olaf finding out about it. However, when she emerged from the cabin area and followed the man to the mast, her question was immediately answered.

Tied to the mast was a rope that led down to a sailboat. Not a large one, but a small one, just big enough to hold two volunteers. Sunny not only saw the sailboat, but she spotted a woman sitting in it, wearing something that the Baudelaires knew were Vision Furthering Devices. Normally, such a pair of glasses might have concealed the identity of the person who was wearing them, and this was one of those cases. Sunny could not see any of the woman's facial features behind the mask. She noticed that the woman was very pale, and her white hair was piled high on top of her head in a bun. Sunny thought that something was familiar about this woman, but she could not seem to think of a time that she had ever met this woman before.

"Come on, then! It's almost sunrise, and we must be quick!" the woman yelled to the man. She then spotted Sunny and gave her a small smile. "Why, hello, Sunny! I remember you as a much smaller child, and look how you've grown!"

"Do we know each other?" Sunny asked.

"Oh, and you can speak too! That is marvelous! I always said you were a bright child! You may not have gathered that, but I did!" the woman explained, as she threw up a rope ladder that was caught by the man.

"We'll have plenty of time for chit-chat later, but right now we need to locate our associate! We'll have to rendezvous with Sunny and her siblings sometime later today!" the man said as he prepared to climb down.

"Rendezvous?" Sunny asked, referring to a word which means "convene at a different time in the same place."

"Yes!" the man cried over the rushing winds. "We would not dream of separating you from your siblings, so we will somehow find you three later in the day! More than likely, you can find us at an underwater catalog belonging to an associate of ours!"

"By the way," the woman cried, "where is he?"

"Dead!" Sunny shrieked.

The man and woman turned to each other in surprise. They were not expecting Sunny to say that. The man turned to Sunny and said, "When did this happen?"

"Hotel before!" Sunny yelled back.

The woman said, "Then we will need to change our plans! Unless, of course…"

"WHO'S ABOARD MY SHIP!" cried a voice that all three volunteers knew too well. The screaming and yelling of the volunteers over the roaring of the sea had woken Count Olaf up, apparently. The man and woman nearly froze in horror, but their instinct kicked in and the man jumped down the ladder, unhooking it as he dropped.

Sunny, meanwhile, hid herself underneath a bench on the side of the boat. She slid under it as the count arrived on the dismal deck. He was absolutely furious, and his eyes were shining so brightly that Sunny could have used the scientific principles of the convergence and refraction of light to have Count Olaf's eyes fry an egg. His eyebrow was at its highest peak, and nothing else in the world could smell as horrible as Count Olaf's breath as he yelled out at nothing in particular.

"WHO'S THERE? ANOTHER DAMN VOLUNTEER? WELL, KNOW THIS: I WILL FIND YOU, AND WHEN I DO, I AM GOING TO STRANGLE YOU UNTIL YOU TAKE ME TO THAT GODFORSAKEN 'LAST SAFE PLACE'!" the count screamed with so much fury and spit, it was a wonder that he could still breath after it. Only Sunny saw Count Olaf cry as he spat out the last three words. He screamed a few more dirty words and then walked to the edge of the ship. Sunny realized that the man and woman had been in that general direction near the boat.

"Ni!" Sunny thought, which meant something along the lines of "He'll torture those two volunteers beyond belief!"

"AHA!" the Count cried triumphantly. For a moment, Sunny thought that he had spotted the two volunteers, but instead he had found her hiding spot. For a moment, Olaf looked as furious as ever, but all of a sudden he immediately composed himself, a phrase which here means "pulled himself together," and picked up Sunny like a bologna loaf, walking her back to her bunk.

"Let me go!" Sunny cried vigorously, struggling to escape the clutches of this vile villain.

Olaf merely started yelling at the youngest Baudelaire yet again. "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" he cried in frustration. "You're lucky I haven't thrown you out into the sea yet! You should be thanking me that I have spared you for so long! I can't tell you how large the urge was for me to just slaughter you right then and there when I first saw you and your siblings right there on my doorstep when that ridiculous banker dropped you off! I'll never forget that day! I had just finished putting the finishing touches on my prized lion head when I heard the doorbell ring! I hardly thought twice about who was at the door. But never, ever, ever in my wildest dreams did I think I would come across you three! Right then, I just wanted to kill you! But I played it cool, and I always tricked you into believing my phony disguises!"

Olaf rang the bell for no apparent reason, and then continued to bring Sunny down to her room. He wrenched open the door, and saw Violet and Klaus sleeping soundly on their beds. Sunny was afraid that Olaf would make a lot of noise and wake up her siblings on purpose so they would not be very well-rested for their long ocean voyage. Instead, the count picked up the intimidated infant and placed her in a crib with eyes carved into the bars, although I have since learned that these eyes were there for more than just decoration. The villain even tucked Sunny in, which is an unusual thing for a villain to do, unless he is posing as a babysitter, which this specific villain has attemped twice.

As the count walked out of the room, Sunny looked at him and called, "Thank you," to which Olaf merely gave a mocking sound.

The second he left the room, Violet and Klaus immediately awoke, spooking Sunny for one brief moment. The two older siblings, apparently, had stayed up doing something while Sunny was out. They walked over to Sunny's crib, and all three siblings smiled at one another.

"Oh, Sunny, we're so glad you're okay," Violet said, giving her sister a hug.

"We thought Count Olaf was doing something horrible to you," Klaus remarked, kissing his sister on the forehead.

"Expound later," Sunny said, telling her siblings to wait until she had composed herself in order to explain.

She embraced both of her siblings, and they embraced her back. Then Violet and Klaus walked back to their beds and slept. Sunny, however, was still thinking about everything Count Olaf had done to her, and about the two mysterious figures who she had met. She was toying with the notion, a phrase which here means "entertaining the idea," that perhaps there was an underlying reason for all of Count Olaf's wickedness and treachery.

There are two morals that go hand in hand with each other that might seem appropriate to fit in at this moment in the proceedings. They are "Revenge is a two-edged sword" and "Misfortunes we bring upon ourselves are doubly bitter." Sometimes people might use phrases from these two morals in order to communicate messages dealing with a liquid that is boiled and served hot. But they each have their own separate meaning, despite them being so similar.

"Revenge is a two-edged sword" means that every revenge has two sides to it: a good reason for doing it, and a reason for not doing it. For instance, if someone spilled sugar on your best coat, you would want to get revenge because the sugar could compromise your disguise and would expose you, but your associate, who is more trained in things like that, tells you that if you do, you will risk the exposition of many other volunteers. As you can very well imagine, real two-edged swords are nothing like revenge.

"Misfortunes we bring upon ourselves are doubly bitter" means that it is bad enough to have unfortunate events thrust upon you, but it is far worse if you are the cause of all of your unfortunate events. For instance, it is far worse to cause yourself to be captured by your foes than to have your foes do the exposing. Not very many people take such risks, but they do happen.

At this moment, Sunny was pondering all of the vengeance and misfortune that Count Olaf had probably gone through, and thought that perhaps he was not as evil as they thought. But how to expose this Sunny had no idea of. And all throughout the night, Sunny kept wondering and wondering, and as the first rays of the morning sun arose, that was when the youngest Baudelaire came up with the conclusion that everyone in the world receives a little pity, despite the sin. And she would see to it, despite the almost-warnings of two close associates, that by the end of the day, which was Thursday, Sunny Baudelaire would finally get Count Olaf to become a noble person yet again.

CONTEST: I have decided to add a contest in which the prize is to have your username referenced in one of the next chapters. All you have to do is list the two movie references and the coded message I have hidden in this chapter, and the first one I get will be the winner. Good hunting!


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

People will often tell you that time flies when you are having fun. They say that in the most unfortunate of situations, everything takes longer to wait for. This is not very true. Occasionally in horrible situations, you will feel that time is ticking too fast for you to do anything, and that you sincerely wish that you could take the clock and wind it back to the very beginning of your series of unfortunate events so you can stop it before it happens again. What happens, sadly, happens, and there is nothing we can do about it, which is why, even when you are in the most perilous of situations, time tends to fly by so quickly, we start to get a bit scared of our clocks.

The sad thing about this dark day was that time was not on its side. I regret to say that as time flew by, and the Baudelaire orphans arose from their beds, they realized it was the day they had been waiting for since they discovered of its significance only five days prior. It was Thursday, when the supposed meeting of the volunteers that the orphans had hoped would take place. Yesterday, however, they had been instructed to send a signal to cancel this important meeting, which Sunny chose to do by suggesting to burn down the hotel. Now the Baudelaires had another feeling about this Thursday: that it would turn out to be the day that Count Olaf succeeded in his ignoble quest to crumble the organization known as VFD and rid the world of every volunteer. As it was, the orphans themselves felt like volunteers, and once again returned to that state of mind that they had felt back at the Count's home, which had once been connected to a very fancy apartment complex, that once Count Olaf had succeeded in his horrid goal, he would no longer require the Baudelaires alive, for if he was successful, it would be all too easy for him to steal the Baudelaire fortune himself. As the three Baudelaires looked at the sunrise, they wondered about whether this day would turn out to be short and sweet, a phrase which here means "a short day that would go by quickly," or an interminable one, a phrase which here means "a day that would never end."

"It's Thursday," Violet said to either herself or her siblings.

"Will today be short and sweet, or interminable?" Klaus asked to either himself of his siblings.

"Carpdie?" Sunny murmured to either herself of her siblings, which meant something along the lines of "Will we seize the day, or will the day seize us?"

"Well, we had better sit here and talk until we get to wherever we're going," Klaus said, this time definitely to his siblings. "We might as well hear from Sunny what happened last night."

"Okay," Sunny replied.

"What happened first, Sunny?" Violet asked.

"First Olaf talked to himself," Sunny explained. "He saw me."

"What did he do to you?" Klaus asked, his brow perspiring with sweat from the heat of the sun through the porthole. "Did he hurt you?"

"No hit. Controlled himself," Sunny reassured her brother. "Tried saying no trust."

"He gave you advice?" Violet asked incredulously, a word which here means "she could not believe that Count Olaf was trying to give Sunny advice, good or bad." "I hope you didn't actually agree with him, Sunny."

Sunny gave her sister an obvious look that told Violet that it was ridiculous to even suggest such a ridiculous thing. "Crying over people about force," Sunny continued.

Klaus paused for a second, as he let this piece of information sink in. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, _ever_ throughout his unfortunate life had he ever think he would hear that Count Olaf was actually crying. He said quietly, "He was crying for his parents."

"Like we have been doing," Violet said, equally quietly.

"Marmos," Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of "We're all like lost little pets."

If you have ever lost a pet in your life, then you know how upsetting it is. Your heart fills with pity and grief, and you put up posters offering a reward for your pet's safe return. Eventually, someone finds your pet and you pay the reward, but if a villain had kept your pet until a reward was offered, there is a large chance that they will demand more, like the persistent little mouse in the children's story _If You Give a Mouse a Cookie…_, where the mouse insists on having so many things, and eventually the repetition of the "if-then" sentences becomes too tedious, and you throw it away in search of a book that has a diversity of sentences within its pages. However, if you know someone who has passed away, leaving their beloved pets behind, then you could somehow faintly imagine how the pets felt behind their hairy bodies, and know that they felt lost and alone, without their guardian taking care of them. The Baudelaire orphans were not pets, and neither are they now, but like them, pets tend to find another owner and remain with them somewhere quiet and remote. They, like other orphans who I have known who lost their parents in a fire, cried for the loss of their parents, as if the only thing that they ever got by on was the gentle touch of a parent's hand to their face.

"Do you think that we're exactly like Count Olaf?" Klaus asked with certain unhappiness in his voice.

"I don't know," Violet said. "It's difficult to say. I want to believe that we're nobler than Count Olaf, but I just can't think of how."

"Dead end," Sunny mentioned gloomily.

"But we want to be noble! That's the difference between us!" Klaus burst out in utter frustration.

"How do we know Count Olaf doesn't want to be?" Violet asked quietly.

"True noble," Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of "There are truly noble people in the world."

"Like who?" Klaus asked.

Sunny then hesitated, which would have not been very acceptable had she done just that a few days ago while she was on a submarine piloted by the husband of an allegedly dead duchess. She was unsure whether she should tell her siblings of the mysterious volunteers she saw during the night or not. But then she remembered that conversation with Count Olaf about trust they spoke of last night, and Sunny felt this was a time she could trust her siblings with another secret.

"Two volunteers came aboard," Sunny said.

Violet and Klaus were surprised at this bit of information, and they were hoping more than anything that perhaps this might be a sign of something good. Violet replied, "Do you know who they were?"

Sunny frowned for one second, as she was somewhat unsure of who the people really were. But then, she saw Klaus's commonplace book lying on the table, and instantly got an idea that she thought would be on the right track, when it was only later that she found out her assumption was wrong.

She walked over to the commonplace book and flipped to a page that was easy for her to turn to, as all three Baudelaires had looked at that same page so many times. It was a picture of their parents, along with two associates of theirs. A sentence below it stated "Because of the evidence discussed on page nine, experts now suspect that there may in fact be one survivor of the fire, but the survivor's whereabouts are unknown." This, however, was not the reason she opened the commonplace book to that page. One of the people in the photograph was not facing the camera, but was instead looking away, the children could not see his face, only one of his hands, which was clutching a notebook and pen, as if the obscured man were a writer of some sort. Sunny remembered the man who she had talked to the previous night, and was starting to wonder if perhaps that this man was that same man, who the Baudelaires had believed to possibly be the third Snicket sibling.

"Possible this man," Sunny said, showing the picture to her siblings and pointing to the mysterious man.

Klaus suddenly realized something, and turned to another page in his commonplace book. He explained, "I think that this scrap of paper might help. Seeing that man next to Jacques Snicket reminded me of this couplet that Isadora wrote: 'In photographs, and in each public place, Snicket rarely shows his face.'"

"I remember that," Violet said, reminiscing, a word which here means "remembering misfortunes past at a morbid medical facility." "But I'm still concerned as to what today is going to bring. After all, it is Thursday. I'm just worried that Count Olaf can succeed today."

"What if he does?" Klaus asked. "What will he do if he does?"

"Will he even do?" asked Sunny.

Violet looked at Sunny curiously and asked, "What would make you even think about that possibility, Sunny?"

Sunny looked at both of her siblings and said, "Chase for revenge."

Both of her siblings looked at her in disbelief. "What revenge?" Violet asked. "He's only after us for our fortune."

Klaus had a sudden realization, and said "Sunny might be right. Why us? Why our fortune? After all, he doesn't have time to steal from everyone and carry out the rest of his nefarious plans."

"Dubbush," Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of "There are many evils still out there that we know nothing of yet."

A famous ancient Greek poet that was occasionally called A, as was a man who I once foolishly trusted to carry a bowl containing the substance glucose and a peculiar piece of parchment, once said "In avoiding one evil, care must be taken not to fall into another." As this sentence implies, there are many evils in the world. So many, in fact, that it is a surprise that there are still noble people in the world who have not stumbled into a well of evil yet. I would love more than anything to say that I and my associates have not fallen into one of these bottomless wells of evil yet, but there have been a few wicked acts done by volunteers that I have regretted ever since I assisted in smuggling a dangerous weapon into a theater for a purpose that was truly noble, but, as I now know, the Baudelaire children had much better aim than their parents, an example of which you can find in chapter twelve.

These evils, I regret to say, are hard to stop, and just like in the curious incident of the volunteers in the nighttime, sometimes can be caused by pure accidents. But when there are wells of evil everywhere, with evil people filling these wells, then no one believes it to be an accident. Accidents happen, of course, but accidentally, these accidents might be believed to be not as accidental as they thought, sometimes accidentally.

"Sunny, did you get a good look at the two volunteers who came aboard?" Violet asked, wondering if perhaps this sudden appearance meant something important, or whether it was a possible red herring, a phrase which here means "something used to throw others off in order to make them think something different than what is really going on, especially when volunteers and villains alike tried to keep the truth from me of the brother of a woman I loved dearly, and the woman herself."

"No," Sunny said. "Man had chubby face, and woman had hair bun."

"Hmm…" Klaus thought, thinking a word that is normally used whenever people are trying to think. "I'm trying to think," he said aloud, "but my mind just keeps drawing blanks."

"Look," Sunny said, pointing out the window, completely shocked.

Both of her siblings looked out the window, and what they saw was so amazingly amazing, it could only take backwards writing to explain it to you without having me read the letters in order, so I cannot cry and not finish the story.

ehT erialeduaB snahpro was egral sduolc fo ekoms, hcihw dluoc ylno evah neeb morf eht erif taht yeht detrats ta eht letoH tnemeuoneD, a ecalp erehw a suoicipsus rohtua nwonk sa B dna na yllauq suoicipsus erotca nwonk sa T dah detisiv ni redro ot pleh tsissa na noitazinagro ni gnidnif tuo yltcaxe nehw ekuD ocraM saw eud ot evirra ta eht letoh. teloiV, sualK, dna ynnuS erew llits dellif htiw feirg taht tsom fo eht etanutrofnu sgniht taht deneppah ta eht letoh eht suoiverp yad erew rieht stluaf.

"I still cannot believe that we helped Count Olaf yet again," Violet sighed in exasperation, a word which here means "the state of being tired." "He's our enemy, and we helped him burn down the hotel. In fact, we _needed_ to burn down the hotel."

"I just hope Kit and the Quagmires got the message. There's always the chance they got into more trouble, just like us," Klaus said, equally exasperated.

"Don't worry," Sunny said, not quite as exasperated as her two siblings. "Should be fine."

"What if they're not?" Klaus asked, just a little exasperated. "I feel so guilty. The Quagmires are out there, fighting for their lives, while we are sitting here in a boat in the middle of the ocean."

"Maybe we'll be able to find them," Violet said, only a tiny bit exasperated.

"Will they still be friends?" Sunny asked, not at all exasperated.

"You have a point, Sunny," Violet answered. "The Quagmires seemed so noble, and we are not exactly as noble as them."

"You're right, too, Violet," Klaus said. "We broke out of jail, stole keys in order to break into a hospital library, helped set fire to a carnival, killed a man, and started another fire that burned down the last safe place."

"It was dreadful, but necessary," Sunny said solemnly.

Hundreds of years ago, in the beautiful country of France, the people were facing much danger. A dreadful man named Maximilien Robespierre felt that in order for France to be brought back to its former glory, drastic steps had to be taken. He used a device called the guillotine to chop off the heads of people who he believed were rebels. Hundreds upon hundreds of people were killed in the short space of nine months, whereupon Robespierre was sentenced to be beheaded himself. Many historians refer to those nine horrendous months as the Reign of Terror.

One saying that describes the Reign of Terror is the one that Sunny had said: "It was dreadful, but necessary." Although Robespierre soon became corrupt with power, and executed those who he just did not like, his original intentions were all for the betterment of his country. For those of you readers who have heard of the phrase "the end justifies the means," then this is a perfect example of that principle. For although Robespierre's methods were dreadful, they were indeed necessary.

I am sure that by now in the Baudelaires' series of unfortunate events, many people are starting to question the nobility of the orphans. However, my personal and professional opinion is that perhaps the philosophy of the Reign of Terror applies to the actions of the Baudelaires. What Violet, Klaus, and Sunny did was dreadful, but it was, sadly, necessary.

At this point in the proceedings, I wish to do something that I never before thought was possible to be done. However, it is surprising what one can do when one knows boat builders and surveillance experts in their lives. The Baudelaires are the main characters of the story, and Count Olaf is the antagonist, a word which here means "really, really bad person against the heroes." However, in order to get the full understanding of a story, then one must understand the entire story from both sides, like listening to both of the lawyers in a courtroom, although it is rarely advisable to trust such people.

With that being said, I am forced to write backwards again, but only for this one statement: ehT tser fo siht retpahc lliw nialpxe yltcaxe tahw tnuoC falO saw gniod elihw eht serialeduaB erew gniklat.

The count woke up to the smell of the sea, which is a smell that you might not enjoy unless you have gotten used to that smell from disguising yourself numerous times as the captain of a ship that was once supposed to pick up a herpetologist and bring him to his room on the fifth floor of the hotel he was supposed to be staying at. The smell of the sea on this particular morning, however, smelled quite good to the count, for it was the day he had been planning for for days and days.

"Aah, what a glorious morning," said the Count, stretching his arms out so that they touched the low ceiling of his cabin. "I always loved Thursdays, but I could do well without Mondays."

He walked out of bed and proceeded at once to the bathroom across the hallway. This would not be the sort of thing he would do normally, but the circumstances, for him, were special. I, though, would prefer to not discuss anything about Count Olaf's hygenic habits inside the bathroom any more than I would want to share with my readers about the history of the organization to which I once belonged, unless of course something dreadful happens that requires me to be forced to do so.

The count walked back into his cabin, using his teeth to scrape some horrid-looking material from the inside of his fingernails. He quickly composed himself, a phrase which here means "got himself prepared," and looked into a mirror he himself had installed upon the wooden wall. "Who's the most handsome count in the world?" Olaf asked himself. "Why, it's me!"

Olaf started going on and on about himself and his looks, and from what I can gather, the despicable villain had done this every morning of his life that he was in front of a mirror. I would prefer to skip over this part of Count Olaf's morning and resume it at the point in time when the conniving count started to talk of his evil plans, although you are free to put this book inside two large pieces of bread and feed it to a hungry person who does not mind gobbling up paper and bread in the same dish.

"Oh, I am the most handsomest count in the world, but right now is not the time to be bragging," bragged the count. "I must prepare for my plans. Now, let's see what we have here."

He opened a drawer inside his cabin, and looked inside at the various items inside. As expected, he had kept the Snicket file with him, and that was one of the things inside. The villain also had a box of matches, a diary filled with entries that I do not want to even think about, and the picture of a woman who loved him rather than a fellow volunteer all because of a newspaper mishap. At least, that is all that I know of.

"Now, all I need is the coordinates of that sub-sub's secret library, and then I can continue on in my master plan to destroy VFD once and for all! Ha!" yelled the count, using his short but horrible laugh once again.

"There is absolutely nothing standing in my way now!" he cried, but then he paused. "Except for that wretched volunteer! That so-called writer thinks he can get the best of me? Well, there's absolutely no chance that he'll ever expose me! I'm as secretive as a bumblebee delivering honey! I'm as sneaky as a fox in the woods! And I'm as suspicious as French fries made in a Chinese food restaurant!"

The villain stroked his hairy chin and pulled the box matches out of the drawer and placed it inside his polluted pocket. He then opened the door of his cabin and walked onto the main deck, looking into the distance for something. I cannot say exactly what occurred while Count Olaf was on the deck, for not everything on the boat was made up of wooden eyes. But for the purpose of making the end of this chapter less tedious for the reader, I am going to insert a short excerpt from a cheerful little story called _The Littlest Elf_. For a reader that is more inclined to read this kind of story, then the rest of this chapter will be as tedious as the story of the mouse and the cookie.

"'Oh, joy!' squealed the littlest elf in sheer glee. "I just love watching deer races! Delia Deer always does such a good job, and I just love watching her first place trophies shine like that in my eyes!'

"The forest animals clamored around the littlest elf, and helped him cheer on Delia Deer, as she galloped ahead of the other deer and pranced across the finish line.

"'Hooray for Delia Deer!' screamed all of the forest animals. They ran over to Delia Deer as she was awarded her fifth first-place medal in a row. Delia was lifted up off the ground by her forest friends and was carried back to her pine-tree house.

"'My dear friends,' Delia said, 'I am so very flattered that I am getting such a big honor, and I only have just one thing to say in response to this kindness:

TO: Lucky Smells Lumbermill

FROM: L

Partner, I may require some assistance once again in my endeavors. My travels have once again forced me to hide in that eye-shaped building I had requested you commission your best men to build years ago. Once there, it is my fondest wish that you telephone the police and have them surround the area so that the enemies that are chasing me may not be able to find me.

I realize that you are still as bitter and cold as you have ever been, and I realize that the fire you once experience must have shaken you quite a bit, but I desperately require assistance in order to keep myself and the secrets I hold safe. If I am captured and killed, then those who I warned you about so long ago will finally triumph and make the world a very unsafe place. I should add that your lumbermill is on this world of which I speak, and I guarantee you that the entire mill will be engulfed in flame when they get their hands on it.

I hope this finds you before my enemies do.

With all due respect,

Lemony Snicket


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

"Wake up, orphans!" yelled Count Olaf as he walked toward their cabin after making a vainglorious speech and doing something so diabolical, I had to cover up the rest of the chapter with an excerpt from the story _The Littlest Elf_, which I sincerely hope you got tired of and flipped ahead, as the story is incredibly tedious, but this story is so dreadful, it would be better for you to simply do something better with your time, like playing with a yo-yo.

As it was, the Baudelaire orphans were already awake, discussing such things as morality and mysterious people, both of which should normally be done after a good breakfast. But the Baudelaires knew better. They were not expecting any breakfast or lunch or dinner or food of any kind as long as they were on a boat with a man who had been chasing after them for months and months. Life goes by so quickly, and to the Baudelaires, it felt as if Count Olaf had been persuing them for years, when exactly one year prior to this specific date the Baudelaires had never heard of Count Olaf and his insidious plot to brutally murder, a phrase which here means "kill," two volunteers living by a beach that had friends working at a nearby trolley station. But if they were to survive, they would have to stay in Count Olaf's boat until they landed somewhere.

"We have landed somewhere!" the villain yelled. "And I want you to gather some provisions for our long trip!"

Violet stood up and walked out into the hallway. She walked up to the count and said, "Long trip?"

"Of course!" spat the villain. "Did you honestly think I wasn't planning on something? You didn't think I was going to drop the mushroom into the city from this ship, did you?"

Klaus walked into the hallway right after his sister. He looked at Count Olaf in bewilderment, a word which here means "like he couldn't believe it," and said, "We didn't know you were going to be doing that at all."

"Of course!" spat the villain again. "Did you honestly think I wasn't going to use the mushroom? I need to do something with it, for Pete's sake."

"For Pete's sake," like the phrase "every Tom, Dick, and Harry," is one that is used to express emotion. They are also both alike in the way that both phrases mention names of infamous volunteers, for almost every volunteer nowadays, including myself, knows of Peter Prufrock and his foundation of a secret recruitment school where he himself was the overseer.

Sunny walked into the hallway immediately after her brother. She looked at Count Olaf like she didn't blame him for anything, an emotion that Peter would have been very disappointed in. "How?" Sunny asked.

"How?" Olaf asked. "I'll tell you how! If I want to drop something on an entire city, I have to be above it, right?"

All three Baudelaires nodded their heads in fright and shock.

"Well, in order to be above the city, I have to be in something that will fly above the city, right?" the count asked again.

All three Baudelaires nodded their heads in shock and fright.

"So that is why I need to be on this island!" yelled the count. "So I can pick up that hot air balloon thingy and get it over the city!"

All three Baudelaires looked at each other in frightful shock. They knew exactly what Count Olaf was referring to when he talked about "that hot-air balloon thingy." He was talking about the self-sustaining hot air mobile home where Duncan and Isadora Quagmire had been last seen, along with a mechanic named Hector. The Baudelaires had only recently learned that the Quagmires' other siblings, Quigley, had taken a helicopter to save his siblings from a pack of eagles that were sicced, a word which here means "sent to pop the hot-air ballons to kill them," upon them.

The Baudelaires had heard what Count Olaf had said, but they could not believe their ears. They had been separated from the Quagmires for quite a while, and had given up the hope of them ever reuniting again. Isadora and Duncan were inside a hot air mobile home that Hector said would stay in the air forever. Quigley had flown up there to save them, but there was a chance he ended up in the same position as his siblings. Still, the Baudelaires still remained hopeful. This hope was what made the Baudelaires get out of the boat and walk onto the tiny island that they had landed on.

"Welcome to the Infinitesimal Island, orphans," the villain said. "This has been a lookout point for volunteers and villains alike for years. But today it will serve one purpose: to deliver the hot air balloon thing to me so I can poison the whole city and look for that sub-sub's secret library! Now get me some provisions for our trip!"

"But we just got here," Violet said patiently, although she wanted to scream at the horrible villain until she was short of breath. "Couldn't we have some breakfast first?"

"Yes," Klaus agreed. "We need some nourishment in order to give us the energy we need to work."

Count Olaf paused and looked at the Baudelaires. "Well," he thought aloud, "I could use something to eat. All right, then! Come with me!"

Olaf led the Baudelaires back onto the ship and brought them into a small galley, a word which here means "tiny dining room." He opened a small wooden cabinet and took out a rather large carton of orange juice and a full loaf of bread. Seeing these breakfast items reminded the Baudelaires of the breakfasts they had at the house of their Aunt Josephine many months ago. It somehow sickened the Baudelaires to know that Count Olaf, even unintentionally, had ways of reminding them of their past guardians that he had either killed, tricked, or both, and this feeling made the orphans, at least, Violet and Klaus, think of Count Olaf as more of a despicable person.

"All right, here's your breakfast," Olaf grumbled, as he opened a cabinet that had thirteen sets of utensils and thirteen plates inside them and took out four of each.

Violet, despite all that she was thinking, worked up the nerve to say, "Thank you for breakfast, Count Olaf."

Klaus caught on to what Violet was doing and said, "Yes, this looks delicious."

"Beborange," said Sunny, which meant something along the lines of "I want some orange juice."

Count Olaf looked a little taken aback at the politeness of the three orphans, and merely complied with their requests. He divided the bread into fourths, which any mathematical genius will tell you is four equal parts taken from a whole thing, and distributed it among them, pouring the orange juice into all four of their cups.

"Are you happy now, orphans?" asked the count, not looking up from his bread. "Are we able to eat now?"

The Baudelaires felt lumps in their throats, but it was not from their hunger. It would have been impossible for the Baudelaires to answer Olaf's question without feeling this lump. Rhetorical questions, a phrase which means "questions that have an obvious answer to them," should normally be asked to those who think of it positively. "Is that soup warm?" is a question one would normally ask to a soup-conscious person. "Are you who I think you are?" is a question one would normally ask when they are trying to get the appropriate answer from the half of the organization that you worked with. But asking a group of miserable children who experienced misery and torture everywhere they went if they were happy is like asking "Is that soup warm?" to a volunteer working at a soup kitchen, for in both situations, it would be foolish to expect a simple answer.

"Yes, Count Olaf," said Klaus politely, and all four of them continued eating. All four people in the cabin sat quietly, eating their breakfast as quietly as they could. When Violet and Count Olaf reached for the maple syrup at the same time, the count merely grumbled and poured it for her, and then for himself.

And then, Sunny did something that she, her siblings, and many other volunteers who heard of this, would come to regret. She gave Count Olaf a hug. Violet and Klaus quickly turned away and drank their orange juice, although they were filled up with an incredible amount of emotion. The villain merely cried aloud in shock, and wrestled out of the infant's grip.

Sunny then looked into his eyes again, and said, "Eye." At this point, Sunny could have meant many things. She could have meant "Your eyes look different," or something like "Maybe we see eye to eye better than you think," or possibly she was saying "I spy with my little eye… something outside flying in the sky."

Violet and Klaus believed that last interpretation and looked out the porthole. Sure enough, something was flying around in the sky. It looked like a bird in many ways, with its aerodynamic nature and how it was majestic in the open air. It did not have wings, like a bird, but instead was run by a series of balloons above the main structure, which was a rather large series of cabins that were interconnected.

"It's the self-sustaining hot air mobile home!" Violet cried, and quickly ran outside to try and get their attention.

"It's the Quagmires and Hector!" Klaus cried, and ran outside to assist Violet.

"Let's go!" Sunny cried, and walked out of the room, beckoning Count Olaf to follow.

All four of them went outside the boat onto the Infinitesimal Island, and immediately they started to think about how to help their friends land. Violet busied herself trying to start a fire to signal them. Klaus gathered as many twigs and branches as he could. Sunny called out, "Quagmire! Hector!"

All of a sudden, all three Baudelaires spotted something that made their spirits soar even more. A single tiny object fell near where the three orphans were working and the villain was supervising. It was a bottle.

Violet picked it up and read, "Dear Violet, Klaus, and Sunny…"

"What about me?" Olaf demanded.

Violet pretended that she did not hear what he said, and continued,

"Dear Violet, Klaus, and Sunny,

If you are reading this, then we are all in danger. Also if you are reading this, then we are close by and are going to be meeting you shortly. This was written at the beginning of our trip just in case we had to warn you.

As you might remember, the self-sustaining hot air mobile home is unable to come to the ground after it has been launched. Therefore, we require your assistance in helping us land upon the Infinitesimal Island.

Violet, we hope that with your mechanical skills you will be able to devise something that you will be able to throw up to us so we can come down.

Klaus, you have hopefully read something useful about air currents and hot-air balloons that will help us descend.

Sunny, we will definitely need your help as a chef to quickly whip up something that will prevent any of the strange animals on this island from interfering with the landing.

Hoping this finds you,

Isadora, Duncan, and Hector (and Quigley)"

The Baudelaires spent a few seconds letting the information sink in. It had been quite a while since they had last seen their friends, and the thought of helping them land their self-sustaining hot air mobile home. The orphans wanted nothing more than to get to work right away, saving their friends and finding out how they were able to survive the dreadful birds that they had been attacked by.

However, they did not just start working. Obviously, if they were to help their friends, they would be delivering the self-sustaining hot air mobile home right into Count Olaf's filthy and unkempt hands. What the Baudelaires knew they needed to do was formulate a strategy so that they could rescue their friends and make sure Olaf did not succeed in his sinister scheme to slaughter everyone in the city.

Violet turned to her siblings and whispered, "I'll use some twigs and leaves from the trees to make a rope. The two of you should do your respective jobs according to the Quagmires' instructions. We can worry about keeping the self-sustaining hot air mobile home away from Olaf once our friends are safe and out of danger."

Klaus nodded his head and said, "I think I might be able to determine where we need to pull from, but I'll need to look for a compass on the boat before I can do that."

Sunny added, "Desayun," which meant something along the lines of "I think I might be able to use some of our breakfast to keep the animals on the island away from us, but I won't be able to hold back the meat-eating ones."

"What about me?" Count Olaf demanded, as he was standing right next to Sunny as they talked. "I'm the adult here, after all! What can I do?"

The Baudelaires were about to respond to Olaf's surprising request to be of assistance, but when they heard a small sound, they knew they had to stop with the conversation, and take a little more action. They heard, from down on the island, the Quagmire triplets all yelling the same word: "Help."

Violet immediately sprang into action, a phrase which means "got right to work," rather than "jumping on spring-powered shoes." She quickly ran over to the foliage of the Infinitesimal Island, which was rumored to be home to various fetid dwarves, but was dismissed as a rumor years ago. She pulled various twigs and leaves of various shapes and sizes from the trees, and gathered as much as she possibly could carry. She brought her load back to the beach, and dumped them onto the sand. She ran back to the forest area to gather more leaves and twigs, and so on and so forth.

At one point in the gathering, Violet noticed something carved into one of the trees. It looked like the carving was made ages ago, as the outline of it was fading very much. What she found was as much of a surprise as anything she had ever seen before. A bowl was carved into the tree, with a small ring carved just above it. This abnormality reminded Violet of some mysterious sugar bowl that she had heard of from several volunteers and villains, but just dismissed it as an odd coincidence.

Eventually, Violet ended up with a rather large pile of twigs and leaves on the sand. But when she looked at the result, she realized a problem that she had not anticipated. Although she had enough materials to reach the Quagmires, she had no way of sticking them together in order to reach the self-sustaining hot air mobile home, which was circling the island.

Meanwhile, Klaus was busy looking around the ship for a compass. He looked in all the drawers in their cabin, Count Olaf's cabin (in which he had to hold his nose), the kitchen, and the supply room. All he could find was some twine, a sewing needle next to it, a few corks from old bottles of wine, glasses that could hold the wine, four refrigerators, and a rather large amount of refrigerator magnets. Nothing in this room could help Klaus with a compass, but then he remembered something from long ago.

About two years before the fire had consumed the Baudelaire mansion, Violet and Klaus were on a hike with their father. Their mother couldn't very well go with them, as she had to watch Sunny. But when the three of them got lost in the woods, Violet took a few supplies out of her knapsack, a word which here means "a useful backpack to put things in," and was able to build a compass out of a sewing needle, a magnet, a small cork, and a cup of water.

Klaus did not know exactly how the compass worked, but he decided to make do with what he had. He gathered one of each item he needed, and then went into the dining room to pour some of the orange juice into the cup, in place of water. Next Klaus rubbed the magnet against the needle, and hoped that the magnet would be powerful enough to make the needle a magnet. I will not explain all of the tedious steps required to make a homemade compass, but instead will just finish by telling you that Klaus did make a compass.

Meanwhile, Sunny was in the kitchen, preparing some food that would ward off the infamous Loathsome Lizards of Infinitesimal Island. These lizards, according to popular folktales that Sunny had heard from her aunt many months before the fire, ate only tiny white mice. Sunny knew that if she was going to get the lizards to leave her and her siblings alone when they were going to rescue their friends, she was going to need to make some makeshift mice.

Sunny found a jar of sugar cubes, and arranged them in the shapes of mice as best she could. Then she took a jar of maple syrup and poured some of it on the sugar cube mice. She decided that the syrup might come in handy later if she needed to keep the mice steady and unmoving, so she took that with her.

The time Sunny walked outside was when Violet was trying to figure out how to stick the twigs and leaves together. When she spotted her little sister carrying the maple syrup, she had an idea and used the syrup to stick the twigs and leaves to each other.

It was at this moment that Klaus walked outside. He showed his homemade compass to his sisters, who were as nervous as he was.

"Judging by the fact that north is that way," Klaus said, pointing to his left, "then the wind is blowing southeast right now. It would be a good idea to pull from that tree over there."

"I'll go stick one end of the twig rope to the tree," Violet said. "Then I should be able to throw the other end up to Hector and the Quagmires."

"Distract the lizards," said Sunny, who immediately started laying sugar-cube mice away from their location.

As they worked, the Baudelaires wondered where Count Olaf was, and that was when they heard another noise. This noise was just as frightening as the "Help!" the Baudelaires had heard before. When they heard this noise, they knew exactly where Count Olaf was and what he was up to. It was the noise of a harpoon gun.

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny immediately ran over to Count Olaf and saw exactly what the horrible villain was doing. He had tied a rope to the other end of the harpoon gun, and was trying to pull the self-sustaining hot air mobile home down to the ground himself. To the Baudelaires' horror, he was succeeding.

"_Let go!_" Violet screamed, grabbing Count Olaf's arm and trying to loosen his grip on the harpoon gun.

Olaf yelled back, "How dare you, you little brat! How dare you grab at me and order me around! If I wanted advice from you, I would ask! Now sit down, and shut up!"

Violet bit her tongue, for she just realized that if Olaf let go, the Baudelaires might never see their friends again. She sat down next to her siblings and they hugged each other as Count Olaf was reeling in the self-sustaining hot air mobile home like a rather large flying fish.

It felt like an eternity to the Baudelaires, but finally it landed on the sandy shores of the Infinitesimal Island. Before actually running onto the mobile home, the Baudelaires just then realized exactly how big it was, and wondered how Count Olaf had gotten the strength to reel in such an enormous object. But they decided to worry about that later, and ran into the mobile home to look for their friends.

The first basket they went into was empty, and so was the second. The third was vacated, and so was the fourth. It was not until they came to the smallest basket on the mobile home that they found exactly what they were looking for.

There was a wise man once, who wrote a story about a cat and some birds, who said, "Equals make the best friends." This means that if you are a doorman at an apartment complex, then you are most likely to be friendly with a doorman at an equally complex hotel. It can also refer to a chef and a cook, a tennis player and a racquetball player, or more importantly, two groups of three siblings who have suffered much misfortune.

The Baudelaires saw the tattered figures of their friends, and they all immediately embraced. They hugged and cried for the longest time, but none of them wanted it to end. Of course, in the lives of the Baudelaires, whenever there is good news, there is bound to be bad news.

On the left sat Quigley Quagmire. The last time the Baudelaires had seen him, he was floating down the sinister waves of the Stricken Stream. Apparently, his journey from there to the Hotel Denouement and to the hot air mobile home did not do anything positive for his appearance. He looked positively ragged, and his face resembled that of a starving man's.

Next to him sat Isadora and Duncan Quagmire. The last time the Baudelaires had seen them, they were floating away on this same exact self-sustaining hot air mobile home, far away into the sky. Had there been no interference on the parts of Count Olaf and his villainous ex-girlfriend, they all might have been safe together.

The unfortunate news then hit the Baudelaires like a rather large sack of potatoes. When they had seen Isadora and Quigley travel into the bright sky, the mobile home was being piloted by a kind man named Hector, who had been the only kind adult the Baudelaires had met in the village. They had really hoped to see him again, but fate had its own idea.

Violet, Klaus, Sunny, Duncan, Isadora, and Quigley all stood up to walk out of the self-sustaining hot air mobile home. They did not know exactly how to feel right then. The children were all happy to see each other, as they were good friends who loved each other very much. But they were also tearful, for while they had reunited with their best friends, they had also lost one, and this made the Baudelaires and the Quagmires feel more miserable than they ever had been in their entire lives.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

It is never a good idea to drink poison. Literally, we all know that this phrase advises us never to reach into a medicine cabinet, pull out a bottle marked poison, and drink it. Sometimes the bottle is not labeled, and it is up to you to figure out exactly what it is before you drink it. If you have ever read the childhood story _Alice in Wonderland_, then you will probably understand this explanation just a little better.

However, this phrase can be used metaphorically, which then means that it is never a good idea to do something you might regret later on. I, for instance, did a great many things that I came to regret later on, especially when reminders like electronic dartboards and sugar-flavored foods werre delivered to whatever abandoned facility I am staying in. When you do something that you think is necessary at a particular moment, but it turns out to be something that you came to regret later on, then you will know precisely how this works.

At this particular moment, the Baudelaires, having been reunited with all three of the Quagmire triplets, did a great many things that they came to regret later. The first thing they did was to walk slowly out of the hot air mobile home, which they came to regret when they later realized what Count Olaf was doing in the meanwhile. They also looked down at the ground as they walked from the opening of the mobile home to the deck of the boat, which they also came to regret when they later realized who Count Olaf was signaling high up in the air. And finally, the Baudelaires and the Quagmires sat in the boat kitchen, which they also came to regret when they later realized who was watching them.

But to them, none of these regrets were happening. Right now, their mixed feelings of joy and sadness kept them from speaking to each other. Finally, Sunny broke the silence by saying, "Hi."

The remaining children pulled themselves together, a phrase which here means, "wiped the tears off their faces and composed themselves," and started to talk to one another.

"What happened to you three?" asked Violet, her curiosity now overwhelming her sadness. "We thought we'd never see you again. After all, noble people have been killed left and right nowadays. It's a miracle that you're safe."

The three Quagmire triplets looked at one another. "It's a miracle that you're safe too, but I'm afraid it's a rather long story," Duncan said.

"Go ahead, we really want to hear it," said Klaus.

"Okay," said Isadora, taking a deep breath to relax herself. "Well, after we had seen the last of the Village of Fowl Devotees, Duncan, Hector, and I were doing everything we could to figure out a way to land back on the ground so we could find you three again. Unfortunately, the way Hector designed it made it impossible to do such a thing, and so we were trapped in the air, helpless, with nothing to help us descend."

"Meanwhile," continued Duncan, "Hector kept preoccupying himself with some very secretive notes that we were never able to see. He asked us multiple times, without telling us why, to be looking for signs of smoke. As you can very well imagine, one day we saw smoke coming from the hinterlands, only the strange thing was that it was coming from two different places at once: a place we learned to be the Caligari Carnival, and a secret headquarters in the Mortmain Mountains."

"Both!" Sunny cried, meaning something along the lines of "We were in both those places!"

Quigley nodded. "We know." He continued, "Meanwhile, after I had been separated from you three through the fork in the Stricken Stream, I mysteriously ended up in a large lake. I swam up to the dock and found a suitable taxi driver to take me where I needed to go. However, as soon as I got in the car, she looked back at me and said, 'You're Quigley Quagmire, right?' I was shocked that she knew my name, but what shocked me even more was that she revealed to me that she was Jacques Snicket's sister."

"Kit," said Violet. "We saw her at the Hotel Denouement, and she told us you were busy going to save your siblings. What happened?"

Quigley continued, "Well, she told me of the great peril that my siblings and of course, you Baudelaires, were in, so I knew something had to be done. Thankfully, Kit happened to know how to send a message to the submarine you were on, as she told me she used to work on it. She also knew of the hidden books on board, so she was able to help me send the messages from the poems. Once that was done, I was able to commandeer a helicopter and try to find my siblings."

"As you can imagine," said Isadora, "we were in grave peril on that self-sustaining hot air mobile home. Many villains knew we were still alive, and so we were soon faced with a pack of eagles led by that despicable associate of Olaf's."

"Which one? He has many associates," Klaus asked, thinking in his mind just who this possible associate might be.

"The hook-handed man."

In an instant, the Baudelaires suddenly remembered the hook-handed villain who helped Olaf with his nefarious schemes time and time again. They all thought of Fernald, his given name, and remembered vaguely wondering what he was doing with his sister Fiona while they were at the Hotel Denouement. When the hook-handed man was in the brig of the octopus-shaped submarine with them, he had been of some help to them by helping them escape, but he also ratted them out to Count Olaf in the end.

"By the way," Duncan mentioned, "I don't suppose you know how the hook-handed man fits in to the submarine catastrophe. My siblings and I tried putting our heads together, but we're at a loss."

"Widdershins son," Sunny whispered, but she spoke loudly enough so that the rest of the people at the table could hear her.

It is a funny feeling to have a sudden revelation, a phrase which here means, "suddenly figuring out something that you couldn't figure out before." For instance, if you had no idea why your cellmate was busy trying to pour water down the stone wall of the prison, suck it up with bread, and then repeat the process, but then you were to suddenly receive a bit of miscellaneous information about the strength of water and the tedious process of erosion, then you would have a sudden revelation as to just exactly why he was doing it.

At this point in the story, all three Quagmires had a sudden revelation at the same time. They had many pieces of the puzzle, but this piece of information that the hook-handed man was the son of Captain Wallace Widdershins was enough to cinch their long-standing theory.

"Of course!" Quigley cried. "This makes perfect sense! That would explain why he burnt down the rhetorical advice center!"

"Not to mention," Isadora added, "why he has hooks instead of hands!"

"And," Duncan finished, "why he was able to blackmail Mr. Poe!"

"Why would the hook-handed man want to blackmail Mr. Poe?" asked Klaus, expecting an answer that he could deal with.

Duncan replied, "Because Captain Widdershins, in case you don't already know, is merely Fernald and Fiona's stepfather. You see, the truth is that the hook-handed man, had it not been for the volunteers that snatched him away in his youth, would have been referred to as Fernald Poe."

"_What?_" asked all three Baudelaires simultaneously and with amazing astonishment. When you hear something you can't believe, you tend to react with normal astonishment, but when the Baudelaires heard from Duncan that the coughing unhelpful banker that used to handle their affairs was the son of a notorious villain who threatened them on many occasions was more than they could bear, so they reacted with amazing astonishment instead of normal astonishment.

"I'm sorry," Violet said. "I think I misheard you. Did you say that the hook-handed man is Mr. Poe's _son?_"

"Wait!" Klaus cried. "That would mean that Fiona is…"

"Mm-hmm!" Sunny shouted, nodding.

"Doesn't this make sense to you, Baudelaires? Wouldn't this explain a lot?"

It was at this point that Violet, Klaus, and Sunny had sudden revelations of their own, and they immediately realized how perfectly it worked.

"Of course!" Violet cried. "This explains why Mr. Poe was so unhelpful!"

"Not to mention," Klaus added, "why he said something about his sister being kidnapped!"

"And," Sunny finished, "why he bring us to Olaf in first place!"

"Exactly," Isadora said, smiling. "We'll tell you what we found out about Mr. Poe later. In the meantime, we have to figure out a way to foil Count Olaf's plan…"

"What was that, orphan?"

The Baudelaires and Quagmires looked at the doorway, and standing there was Count Olaf. The orphans had been so wrapped up in their sudden revelations, they had not heard the count walk over to the area and listen in on their conversation.

"So you've finally figured out why that idiotic banker was so unhelpful. He was blackmailed. Having his first son be a part of our team proved to be a tremendous asset. He was able to provide us with enough information to threaten that idiot banker and his family. As it was, he hid his family away somewhere, so I used that stupid reporter to kidnap his sister. When I found him, Fernald Poe Widdershins was a nobody, but thanks to me, he became a somebody."

"Wait," said Violet. "Why are you telling us all this?"

Olaf grinned, as if Violet had seen right through him. "Oh, I don't think it hurts to share a few secrets with the deceased."

Instantly, the hearts of all three children stopped, as if they had frozen when Count Olaf said the word "deceased." The word "deceased," of course, means "dead." The six children, like most normal people, were terrified of the thought of Count Olaf brutally murdering them without anyone knowing, let alone caring. As far as the general public was concerned, the Baudelaires dead would be a great miracle to them.

"You wouldn't kill us," Klaus said, although his facial expressions showed an entirely different reaction.

"Really?" the count sneered. "Let's see exactly how remorseful I've been. I killed Uncle Monty, his ridiculous assistant, Aunt Josephine, the former lumbermill foreman, the former Prufrock Prep gym teacher, Jacques Snicket, Babs, and even your par…"

Everyone stopped. Olaf stopped because he just let his worst possible secret slip. The Quagmires stopped because they were taken aback by this startling piece of news. The Baudelaires stopped because their eyes were filling with tears. They had always known that their home had been destroyed by an awful fire, and they had also always known that Count Olaf was a horrible arsonist, but they had always thought that the fire had been the result of something else. They never wanted to bring their minds across the possibility that Count Olaf set their house in flames and killed their parents, and whoever else was in there. Now, knowing that this despicable villain set fire to their house and killed their parents, the Baudelaire orphans let out their anger in the most furious way possible.

"Murderer!" screamed Sunny, getting on the table and walking across to try and bite the count's nose off.

"Arsonist!" screamed Violet, running over to Olaf to try and pull his arm off.

"Villain!" screamed Klaus, walking over to Olaf to try and kick him in the shin.

The count looked outraged and threw the orphans off of him so that they got thrown to the ground. "How _dare_ you! How dare you try and attack me! You ungrateful little brats! If it wasn't for me, you would have never met your dear, sweet Uncle Monty. If it wasn't for me, you would be swimming with the leeches. If it wasn't for me, you never would have even known about VFD. _And_, if it wasn't for me, you wouldn't be here now!"

"We'd rather be anywhere else than here!" screamed Violet.

Olaf roared back, "What about your friends? If it wasn't for me, you would have never known them!"

"It's because of you they got involved!" Klaus cried.

"Wretch!" yelled Sunny.

In a rage of fury, the count grabbed Sunny and lifted her up as high as he could. "If you even dare talk back to me again," he shouted, "I swear I will bring her up to the deck and throw her into the ocean, and believe me, _I will not feel remorseful in the slightest_."

Their hearts pounding, Violet and Klaus sat back down, and slowly Olaf set Sunny back down on the table. They saw the Quagmires looking just as astonished as they, but they were trying to hold back their fury. The Baudelaires knew that temper tantrums, however fun they may be to throw, rarely solve whatever problem is causing them. The orphans admired how well the Quagmires were able to control themselves, but at the same time, they felt like they were ready to burst with emotion. Obviously, Count Olaf was referring to the Quagmire parents, as well as their own, but the Quagmires had known better than to let out a temper tantrum.

"Now then," said Count Olaf, "I must take care of a few things, and then we will be flying along. And when we do…" The count made a slicing motion on his neck, a motion which only has one meaning: deceased. He walked off, mumbling to himself.

"What are we going to do?" Isadora said, breaking the silence like a knife. "If we sit around here and do nothing, Count Olaf will succeed, VFD will be crushed like a grape, and we'll be dead."

Despite the sadness the Baudelaires were feeling, they knew that it was not the right time to be sitting around and weeping. They pulled themselves together yet again, and got right back to their normal selves.

"Let's go," Sunny said, wiping her teeth with her fingernails.

"What are we going to do?" Duncan asked. "We can't very well run away."

Violet grinned, despite the circumstances. "But we can fly away."

In one instant, all six children ran outside of the boat. They didn't care if Olaf saw them, for they were making a run for it, a phrase which here means, "going to board the self-sustaining hot air mobile home."

They ran through the ship without bothering to stop for anything they might need. Both the Quagmires and the Baudelaires knew that the mobile home should have enough food left to supply them until they figured out a way to get down.

"Head for the entrance!" Klaus yelled as they exited the boat and ran down the beach at top speed.

Quigley, being in front, yelled, "Count Olaf got there already!"

The count, naturally, heard all of this shouting, and looked up. Even more naturally, he looked positively shocked at the swarm of children coming towards him. Instinctively, he got out of their way, but then realized just exactly what he was doing. Fortunately for the children, Sunny had been smart enough to bite the rope just near the tip of the harpoon gun, so the hot air mobile home would be airborne by the time they got on it.

Olaf jumped and grabbed the side of one of the baskets. The Baudelaires and Quagmires felt him climbing aboard, so they continued to run. The various baskets were excellent hiding places, for Count Olaf was too big to fit through all of the narrow walkways in between.

"If we make it to the basket with the excess food," Duncan explained, "we can easily detach it from the rest of the baskets and get it to take off on its own."

"You mean, like a hot air balloon," Violet added.

"Correct," Duncan replied.

"Let's go!" Sunny cried, and the orphans continued to run.

Meanwhile, the count was forcing his way through the walkways. "_Where are you children? You should not have tried to run! When I find you, I will kill you right here and now!_"

The screaming of the count only made the children run faster from him. At last, the orphans made it to the basket containing crates that were labeled things like "APPLES," "BREAD," and "CUCUMBERS." The Baudelaires and the Quagmires squeezed themselves inside the basket, and then Violet took out her ribbon.

She tied her hair up, as she always did when trying to think, so that she could try and figure out how they could detach the basket from the rest of the self-sustaining hot air mobile home. In a few seconds, Violet had the idea brilliantly in her head. She opened the crates of bread, and sure enough, she found exactly what she was looking for: a very stale piece. She took the bread and used it to separate the straw connecting the two baskets.

"Hurry up, Violet!" Klaus said in desperation, watching Count Olaf tear his way through the other baskets towards them.

"_You foul, vile children!_" screamed the count. "_You'll not escape from my clutches again! Not when you're so close!_"

At last, Violet had managed to tear the straw apart, and held on to Sunny tight as their basket drifted away from the count.

"Look!" Duncan cried, pointing to Count Olaf.

The children turned and looked, and saw, to their astonishment, Count Olaf looking down at the ground with a feeling of fear in his eyes. He hadn't exactly been paying attention to the increasing elevation of the mobile home, and now, seeing how high up he was, the count looked positively terrified.

"Help?" asked Sunny.

The rest of the orphans looked at one another. They knew it was always a noble deed to help someone in need, but this was a man who had, himself, murdered countless people, along with their parents, and continuously threatened them with death. Had the children been older, like other volunteers that would have known better, they would have at least figured out some way of helping Count Olaf get to the ground, rather than watching a man die because of their misdeeds. But the orphans were too filled with grief to care. As the self-sustaining hot air mobile home sailed away, they couldn't help but bring their minds back to the conversation that they were having before the villain interrupted.

"I suppose we should tell you what happened," Isadora said. "Well, once Quigley had finally managed to arrive at our location, the hook-handed villain was attacking us. You may have noticed that the balloons that are holding this basket up have minor bandages on them."

"Unfortunately," Quigley continued, "Hector would not give up his life and the secrets he held aboard without a fight, so he tried defending himself. Naturally, the hook-handed man drew in closer to him, and the two of them had it out. Punches were thrown, lips were bleeding, and eventually, the worst happened."

The Baudelaires all tensed up when Quigley said "the worst," for they knew exactly what was about to be said.

"Hector slipped over the side of the basket," Duncan continued. "In desperation, he grabbed onto the hooks of the hook-handed man as he dangled above the water. The hook-handed man, riding one of the eagles, tried to shake Hector off, until finally, we heard the whooshing of air. My siblings and I peeked over the side, and what we found was Hector falling into the sinister waves of the ocean, with the hook-handed man falling just above him."

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny were unsure of how to react. On one hand, a horrendous villain who had threatened them time and time again was dead, but then again, so was a man who had been somewhat of a friend to them at a time when no one else was there. The children knew that the right thing to do was to mourn the loss of a fellow volunteer, and so that is what they did.

"I feel so awful," Violet said. "We could have avoided all of our misfortunes just by getting on board with you, and maybe none of these awful things would have happened."

"It's not your fault, Baudelaires," Quigley said. "We had no idea all of this was going to happen. No one can predict the future."

The Baudelaires knew that Quigley spoke the truth. It is impossible to actually predict the future, unless of course you happen to be a historical person of great significance who is best known for wearing a multicolored coat. The Baudelaires, of course, do not, and probably will never, have no historical significance, and to the extent of my knowledge, none of them owned coats of multiple colors. However, throughout my dismal stories of the suffering and misery of the Baudelaire orphans, there have been times when they have made conjectures, a word which here means "guesses," about what was to lie ahead for them. In most of these cases, they were correct.

Now the Baudelaires made another one of their conjectures. They had a strange feeling that this hot air balloon trip that they were taking would only lead to disaster. Sure, they were with their friends, away from the horrible villain that had accidentally admitted that he had killed their parents and burnt their home to the ground, but they had experienced too much misfortune in their lives to regard the rest of their lives as fortunate. Lots of people have unfortunate events in their lives that are usually balanced out by equally fortunate events. The Baudelaires, as you well know, are not these people.

Many, many, many years ago, the poet known as Aesop wrote a fable entitled "The Bear and Two Travelers." In this story, two unknowing volunteers are walking down a lone path, when suddenly a bear comes out of nowhere. The first man quickly scampered up the tree and hid from the bear. The other one lay still on the ground, hoping the bear wouldn't eat him. Fortunately for him, the bear passed him by, but not before whispering something in his ear. The first man climbed down from the tree and said, "What did that bear say?" The second man replied, "He told me not to trust someone as a friend who abandons you in times of peril."

I regretfully regret to say that the moral of this story applies readily to the Baudelaires and the Quagmires in the chapters to come. The moral, written by Aesop, was "Misfortune trusts the sincerity of friends." Sometimes, in order to avoid trouble, people save themselves and leave their friends in the middle of a troublesome situation. But before I conclude this chapter, I have a question for you to ponder, dear reader, as you finish off this story: When the bear of misfortune interferes with the long and winding road that the orphans are traveling on, who will be the ones climbing up the tree, the Quagmires or the Baudelaires?


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The Baudelaires and the Quagmires were airborne for a few hours. As they flew, the Baudelaires filled the Quagmires in about what happened at the Heimlich Hospital, the Caligari Carnival, the Mortmain Mountains, the _Queequeg_, and the Hotel Denouement.

Violet explained how they had gotten positions at the Heimlich Hospital's Library of Records to find the Snicket File, and how they had disguised themselves in the carnival to find out more information about their parents. Klaus recalled their time at the Mortmain Mountains, which Quigley knew about all too well, and what had taken place when they had come aboard the _Queequeg_. Finally, Sunny recapped exactly what had happened when they were at the Hotel Denouement, and how they saw many of their former guardians and other people that looked familiar to them.

Since the Quagmires had already told their story, there was another very long silence between the six orphans. They were not only hovering above the waters of a very large ocean, but they were also heading in some direction that they had no idea where it led. They could only hope that they would be able to land somewhere so that they could find out more about the mysteries that surrounded them, and how to stop Count Olaf once and for all.

"Look!" Sunny shouted, which broke the silence. She was pointing out of the large tear in the basket of the hot air balloon, and over to some large rocks. Her siblings and the Quagmires could not see anything unusual at first, but then Klaus noticed just exactly what his sister was pointing at."

"Scuba gear," Klaus said, marveling. He could not believe, that out in the middle of the ocean, someone would leave their scuba gear on a large rock and then leave. Normally, he would dismiss this as an oddity and move on, but there were two things about the scuba gear that got him and the other orphans wondering. The first thing was that there were, strangely, six outfits; one for each of them. The other thing was that this scuba gear had a familiar picture on them. On the front of the suits were a portrait of a man with a beard, whom Klaus immediately recognized as scuba gear belonging to the second submarine he and his siblings had ever been on.

"Those are uniforms from the _Queequeg_!" Violet cried, either in happiness or sadness.

"Is that Herman Melville on the front?" Duncan asked. "I always did like his work."

"Yep," Sunny said, still staring at the six outfits of scuba gear.

"Hold on," Quigley suddenly said, and opened his commonplace book. He studied a few complex maps he had written before finally saying, "This is the area where Hector and the hook-handed man fell down in."

The Baudelaires' minds and spirits strengthened with the knowledge that perhaps Hector was alive and breathing somewhere here. However, they also realized that in order to look for any signs of him, they were going to have to don, a word which here means "put on," rather than the boss of an organization known as the Mafia, the scuba uniforms and swim down into the ocean to find him.

Klaus turned to Isadora to say what he was thinking, but she said, "I was thinking the same thing. Maybe we should try putting them on."

In an instant, the orphans got to work getting the hot air balloon to descend. Violet, Duncan, and Quigley moved the ropes tied to the balloon around so that they would be able to get closer, while Isadora, Klaus, and Sunny prepared to use some of the straw from the basket to make a rope that would, hopefully, allow them to climb down and reach the rocks below. The orphans doubled their efforts as quickly as they could, and finally they were able to get down onto the rocks. To their great relief, the straw didn't break when they climbed down. Their descent reminded the Baudelaires of the long journey they took down the elevator of 667 Dark Avenue, but it was much lighter, which was a relief.

Once all six orphans got down onto the rocks, they looked around. The rock they were standing on was fairly small, but large enough to hold the six of them. Violet, the last one to climb down, held on to the rope for what seemed to her like an eternity, but finally let it go, and the hot-air balloon drifted away into the sky.

"Well," Klaus said, "should we put on these scuba uniforms?"

Even though the answer was obvious enough, the six orphans hesitated before answering, which was ironic considering they were in the prescence of scuba uniforms from a submarine captained by a man with a philosophy opposite of that.

"We can't do anything else," Duncan said, and the orphans put on the scuba uniforms. Amazingly enough, the uniforms fit them, as though the uniforms had been left there on purpose by a volunteer, just like when a volunteer left out a mysterious brunch for the Baudelaires only two short days ago.

Sure enough, there was a note attached to Sunny's breathing apparatus. Violet picked it up and read, "No time like the present. Use well. T."

"What does that mean?" Sunny asked.

Violet turned to Klaus and said, "What does this mean to you, Klaus?"

Klaus read the message over a few times and finally concluded, "I can't tell anything besides that a volunteer calling himself or herself T left these scuba suits for us, but I cannot figure out where we're supposed to go from here."

"Wait one second," Quigley gasped. "Let me see that." Klaus handed the message to Quigley, who read the note and immediately looked out into the distance, at the sun.

"What are you doing?" Isadora asked.

Quigley smiled, despite the circumstances, and replied, "'No time like the present.' Clearly there is a certain direction that this volunteer indicated we go. I'm assuming you all know what it means when someone points their hand in a certain direction and says '4:00' or '5:30.' Clearly we're supposed to go where the sun is in position, because that is an indicator of time. That's what's meant by 'the present'!"

All of the orphans immediately faced the sun and jumped into the water. The waters of the ocean were freezing, and even the layer of scuba gear surrounding their bodies was not enough to render them immune, a word which here means "having the ability to resist," from the chill. The orphans descended farther into the ocean, expecting to find some sort of marker that would lead them in a different direction, but no such thing could be found. They all felt it was best to do what Quigley suggested, and kept going straight on. Quigley, being the expert cartographer, led them all, while Violet remained in the back, as she was the eldest and tallest of all of them. Sunny swam right next to Klaus, who made sure he kept a close eye on his sister. And of course, Isadora and Duncan stayed near all of them, so as not to get lost. As the orphans progressed, they eventually spotted a sign, as they had hoped. It read, "Go through here to LL."

The Baudelaires and Quagmires could not speak, but Violet looked around as if to say, "This is our best bet. Let's go." Without any more hesitation, the Baudelaires and the Quagmires swam into the narrow passageway and continued on. The minutes seemed interminable as the passage became darker, and darker, and darker, until it was so dark, they had to hold hands so they wouldn't lose each other.

As they reached a fork in the passage, Sunny beckoned the rest of them left, and in a few seconds they saw why. There was available room to breathe fresh air in there, but the odd quirk about it was that it looked like an underwater beach, and the Baudelaires swam in for a closer look. They and the Quagmires looked around, and the triplets didn't see anything that particularly drew their attention. But when Violet, Klaus, and Sunny took off their helmets to breathe in some air, they spotted tiny little footprints that led up to a dish of something that looked suspiciously like a fishbowl and smelled of old noodles.

"Gorg Grotto!" Sunny cried at once, and her siblings nodded in amazement. Only days ago, they had been stuck in this calamitous cavern, surrounded by a poisonous mushroom. The Baudelaires looked frantic, but to their relief, the bunches and bunches of fungi that had been there before were nowhere in sight. They nodded to the Quagmires, who took off their helmets as well, and looked around at their surroundings.

"What is this place?" asked Isadora, marveling at the intricate way the grotto was designed.

"The Gorgonian Grotto," Klaus explained. "We were here a few days ago, when Sunny nearly got poisoned from the Medusoid Mycelium."

"Wait a minute," Duncan interrupted. "What happened to the mycelium? We heard something dreadful happened."

"Count Olaf got his hands on a specimen and was planning to drop it over the city," Violet explained. "But he might not be able to now, because it was on the head of the ship, and there is no possible way he would be able to get down from the rest of the hot air mobile home."

Just then, the orphans felt a sudden chill, but the grotto wasn't cold. Clearly, they were expressing doubts that Count Olaf would have given up the poisonous fungus without a fight, and so hearing Violet trying to reassure them only made it more foreboding.

Without another word, the orphans put their scuba gear back on and continued on. They felt that less talking and more action was appropriate, and so they knew they could not stop again, unless there was a problem with their gear. They swam through the dark waters, and eventually followed another passageway out into a larger body of water.

The Baudelaires and the Quagmires decided that it would be best to descend farther down, and so they went down. What they saw came as a complete shock to them. In fact, it was so shocking, they knew that they needed to hold onto whatever they could get their hands on.

For at the bottom of this large body of water was three things that made them all realize exactly where they were. The first thing was scraps of paper with notes, citations, and many, many words on them, which by itself meant nothing. The second thing was pieces and pieces of wood, all looking like they had been thrown to pieces into the water. But the final, and most shocking, thing they saw was a solitary item. This item was the key that told them all where they were. This item was something that the Baudelaires thought they would never see again. This item was a bowl of frozen green liquid. The average reader might pass this off as something trivial that the orphans shouldn't really have cared about, but the design on the bowl reminded them of a time when they were sitting down in a cold house, with no heat, with no windows open, and were having a dinner of chilled cucumber soup.

The Baudelaires, of course, were once again completely shocked, as they finally realized that they were looking at the remains of the house of their Aunt Josephine and they were swimming in Lake Lachrymose. They looked up, expecting to be able to see the large rock that her house had been precariously perched upon, but they were too far down to see anything above the water. Why a passageway from the Gorgonian Grotto led to this lake was a mystery to the Baudelaires, and just seeing the shards of wood reminded them of their Aunt Josephine and how she was a kind and caring guardian, despite her extreme panophobia and her obsession for the English language. The only image of her that they distinctly remembered was the look of horrification and fear on her face when Count Olaf had thrown her among lions, a phrase which here means "had thrown her to the vicious Lachrymose leeches and left her to die." Despite the poundings of their hearts and the remembrance of the many injustices dealt to them since the bad beginning, the Baudelaires felt it was best to tell the Quagmires everything once they reached their final destination, for up ahead of them was another passageway. They reassured the Quagmires using the appropriate hand signals, and then the six orphans continued on.

It is at this point in the proceedings that I wish to point out that in this point in the proceedings in this final tale of the Baudelaires' lives that it was still Thursday, the day of the former gathering of the volunteers, as far as the orphans knew, at least. This day, I regret to tell you, was not only the day of someone's torturous triumph, but of the shocking secrets that had been hidden from them for many years because of their overprotective parents not wanting them to learn of the shocking truth of their family. Being overprotective is normally not a sin, but when it results in your death, your husband's death, and the near-death of your would-be brother-in-law, it starts to look guiltier than it is. Many times in the Baudelaires' story were the orphans overprotective of each other. When they were in Uncle Monty's house, they were overprotective of each other to the point where they missed some vital evidence that could have helped them avoid at least a few of their misfortunes. When they lived at 667 Dark Avenue, they had been overprotective of each other to the point where they were too late to save their friends. And only recently, when they had been in the Mortmain Mountains, they had been overprotective to the point where they could have learned the shocking truth of the man with a beard but no hair and the woman with hair but no beard and why Count Olaf was afraid of doing anything to upset them.

But at that moment, in a passageway that they had gotten into by going through the Gorgonian Grotto and Lake Lachrymose, they were being more overprotective of themselves and the Quagmires than they had ever been before in any of their lives. They stayed in a closer group, and yelled into their breathing apparatuses to see if the others could hear. They always could, and the Baudelaires and Quagmires continued on through the passageway.

This passageway was the smallest out of all of the ones that they had been in, so they had to line up one by one to go through quickly and efficiently. When they emerged into another body of water, the Baudelaires had a suspicious feeling that they were at another body of water they were bound to recognize.

They, of course, were right. As they and the Quagmires swam up to the surface, the orphans noticed many things around them. They noticed many beautiful houses lined along the street, and that drew them to the conclusion that they were in a town stream. They also noticed a vacant lot with a sign that read "Future Home of Volunteer Fabric Designers," which Klaus made a note of in his commonplace book, still kept safe inside his pocket. But Sunny suddenly said something just when she had another one of her revelations.

"Smell," she said, and the rest of the orphans interpreted her meaning differently. Violet thought she meant something along the lines of "This river has a horrid smell," which it did. Isadora thought she meant something along the lines of "We really do smell," which they did. Klaus thought she meant something along the lines of "It's so nice to smell something other than water," which was true. Quigley thought she meant something along the lines of "Something here smells wonderful," which was also true. Only Duncan realized that what she really meant was "What is that smell?" and he immediately recognized the smell in the air as something his grandmother used to use for formal dinners at home.

"Horseradish," Duncan said, and Violet and Klaus immediately realized that they were currently sitting beside the Stricken Stream, a long and disgusting river that wasn't a particular favorite of theirs. However, that was not what the orphans were interested in. They looked again at the empty lot with the sign, and realized, to their horror, that that location was the exact same place where Uncle Monty's house used to be.

The Baudelaires looked at the lot, and then looked again. They kept looking, hoping to see Uncle Monty's corpse arise from the dirt and embrace them forever. They also wished that at least some of his notes had been kept safe so that they could study them. But all the information they had was the sign that read "Volunteer Fabric Designers," which only a fool would think didn't shorten out to spell V.F.D.

The Baudelaires were surprised to realize that they hadn't thought about V.F.D. in hours. After all, this was the secret organization that had been surrounding their lives with mystery, but the Baudelaires then realized exactly why they hadn't really thought about it. Only just last morning did the Baudelaires attend a trial filled with volunteers and villains alike, but the noble volunteers had done nothing to help the Baudelaires fight the injustice being dealt there. Even though V.F.D. was supposed to be a noble organization, the Baudelaires were then having their doubts about whether they really wanted to learn much about it anymore, now knowing that what Fernald Widdershins had said about people being mixed salads may be right after all. It is impossible to by 100 pure, unless, of course, you are a carton of orange juice, which if you are, then I wish you fondest wishes that your intellect may yet rise above mere reading ability. You cannot be a truly good person, and likewise, you cannot be a truly bad person. People tend to judge other people on solitary actions, but the truth is that people are so much more than what they do. It's what they do and how they react that makes them who they are. The Baudelaires were mostly noble, for they did good things and bad things, but they always felt guilty and upset when they did these bad things. Even though the Baudelaires were being slightly hypocritical in their belief that the noble volunteers had done nothing to help them, they had every right to be upset.

"Baudelaires? Are you okay?" asked Isadora, breaking the three children out of their daze. Since there was no one around to hear them, and it was a quiet place, the orphans felt it best to tell the Quagmires absolutely everything, from their horrifying arrival at Count Olaf's house to their perilous voyage on the suspicious boat.

They sat down and Violet started to explain to the Quagmires what they were about to tell them, so that the Quagmires could brace themselves for things more shocking than they ever could have imagined. Klaus started to tell them, down to the last detail, every single last thing that had ever happened to them between going to Count Olaf's house for the first time and leaving Lachrymose Lake. Violet told them, down to the last detail, every single last thing that had happened to them between arriving at the lumbermill and leaving 667 Dark Avenue. Sunny, with her siblings' help, was able to say, down to the last detail, every single last thing that had ever happened to them between arriving at the Village of Fowl Devotees and being led up the Mortmain Mountains. And finally, all three of them explained, in the most intricate detail they could, every single last thing that had ever happened to them between climbing up the Mortmain Mountains and arriving at the Infinitesimal Island in Count Olaf's vessel.

"I had no idea it had been so serious," Duncan murmured, while his eyes were starting to swell with tears.

"Nor did I," Quigley said, wiping his eyes.

"Same here," Isadora muttered, nearly breaking out crying.

The Baudelaires looked at their friends and started to get into a six-way embrace, but a sudden sight up above shocked them. It is unsurprising to see something flying in the air, granted if it is a bird or a plane or a flying superhero with a red cape. But it is surprising to see, when you look in the air, a hot air balloon that looked like the basket had been ripped at both ends, and standing in it is a person with one eyebrow with a horrible-looking smell and an even worse-looking smile.

"It's Count Olaf!" Klaus cried. "He's up there!"

The Quagmires looked up and realized, to their horror, that the Baudelaires were right. "It _is_ him!" Duncan cried. "He may be looking for us! Quick! Put the scuba gear back on!"

Duncan put on his scuba gear and the rest of the orphans followed suit. They immediately went back into the water and continued on. Their hearts pounding powerfully, they swam as fast as they could, for fear that the count might be scanning the entire area in search of them. Finally, just before the count made the decision to look in the stream, the orphans had already made it out of his line of sight

An hour passed, and the orphans were starting to think that they were never going to make it to wherever it was they were supposed to be going to, but soon they reached another passageway that read "U.C. D.D." The orphans had no idea what in the world this message meant, but they went up there just the same, in the hope that perhaps it led to a place where their questions might at last be answered. Little did they know how right they were.

The passageway finally ended in a gigantic cavern, probably hollowed out by people, and not made naturally. The strange thing about this cavern was that the orphans had to swim straight upwards to get to the opening. The Baudelaires and the Quagmires clamored out, and they all marveled at the cave. But when they walked further inside, their hearts were filled with more joy than they had ever been filled with in their entire lifetimes.

There is another famous Greek writer, besides Aesop, who wrote tales that were entertaining, but this particular one wrote types of stories called epics. His name was Homer, and he wrote the legendary tale _The Odyssey_, which is about the adventures of Greek soldier Odysseus on his way from the ruins of Troy to his home on the relatively unknown island of Ithaca. Odysseus runs into all sorts of things, like fish-like women who seduce him into a trance, a monster with only one eye and one eyebrow, a vengeful god of the seas, and a witch who could change people into animals. Even though he suffers all of this hardship, he finally makes it to his loving wife and son at home. Of course, the Baudelaire and Quagmire orphans do not have much experience with beasts like the ones Odysseus fought, they felt, at this moment of them walking deeper into the chasm, exactly how the Greek hero felt when he arrived at the place he had been working so hard to get to.

They were staring at a large stone structure in the middle of the chasm. It was enormous, big enough to hold a restaurant. To put it in perspective, a phrase which here means "explain just how large it was," all six orphans, standing on top of one another, could not have been able to grab the top or even make an attempt to touch the halfway mark. However, they found a rather large ladder on the other side of the chasm, and so the children ran all the way across to reach it.

Sunny was the first one to ascend, and when she got to the top, she yelled, "Yep!" as if to clarify their thoughts. For at the top were markings next to things you might call shelves, but shelves aren't normally laid down flat, and are most certainly not made out of stone. They all climbed up to the top and marveled at just how large it was.

Then, as if by magic, Sunny spotted the two mysterious volunteers who, in the dead of night, had promised to meet her and her siblings at the exact place they knew they were in. The masked man and woman walked over to the ladder and climbed up. The Baudelaires and the Quagmires walked over to them, expecting them to take off their masks and reveal themselves. But instead, they kept their faces hidden, although the orphans could tell they were both smiling from underneath their masks.

"Hello, Baudelaires and Quagmires," the man said, his smile growing wider every second. "We bid you our fond congratulations on making it here. On behalf of ourselves and V.F.D., we would like to welcome you all to the underwater catalog of Dewey Denouement."


	7. Chapter 7

Just a Note: I have not yet shut down the contest. Until I finish the entire story, that contest from chapter 2 is still available to anybody who wishes to enter. Good hunting!

Chapter 7

"So this is the underwater catalog," Klaus said, smiling in delight and surprise.

"Correct," said the masked woman. "We knew that in order to protect the underwater catalog, we had to design an intricate and complex way to prevent our enemies from entering."

Duncan ruffled his brow in confusion. He had expected there to be some rational expression for the simplicity of the directions, but this wasn't quite what he expected. "I'm afraid I don't understand. How come that was so intricate? It wasn't at all difficult."

The masked man explained, "Yes, to you at least. You children were able to interpret the note I left, and…"

Violet interrupted, "So you're the volunteer who wrote that message about time." She had a look of comprehension on her face that made her realize how it all fit. "You met Sunny onboard the ship to confirm we were going where you wanted us to go."

"Correct," he replied.

"But," the woman continued, "we still had the problem of the self-sustaining hot air mobile home. I had calculated the point of arrival of the flying device to the Infinitesimal Island, but we still didn't know if you would think to try and escape from Olaf's clutches or if he prevented you from doing so. Clearly, our preliminary assumptions were correct."

"Yes," the man added. "The trick was that the passageways passed by several former V.F.D. headquarters, and we knew these would distract villains who were trying to find and destroy this top-secret catalog. Clearly, following the headquarters would be much smarter, and therefore the actual location of the underwater catalog would be safe."

The children nodded as they began to understand the logic of these volunteers. But before they could ask any more questions, the man and woman immediately hopped to it, a phrase which here means "immediately got to work." They walked around the giant stone catalog, peering inside every one of the large shelves, looking for something.

"Excuse me," Klaus called when the masked volunteers were at the other end. "What are you looking for?"

The volunteers looked up in surprise, as if they were expecting Klaus to understand immediately. The woman walked over to the children and said, "Have you already forgotten what is hidden somewhere down here?"

The Baudelaires paused and realized exactly what the woman was talking about. Ever since they had been up in the Mortmain Mountains, uncovering secrets of the V.F.D. headquarters, the Baudelaires had known about a mysterious item of sweetened proportions that was supposedly supposed to keep a dangerous secret within.

"The sugar bowl," all three of them said in unison.

"Wait," Duncan interrupted. "What makes you think the sugar bowl is here? Hector said it was going to be delivered by crow to the hot air mobile home."

"That's right," Isadora said. "He said we would need to deliver it to someone in Paltryville."

"No, I'm afraid they're right," Quigley sighed sadly. "As far as I could tell from the notes I looked at, Hector overlooked the fact that one of our enemies might burn down the headquarters."

"Burn down…" Duncan said, but paused in the middle of his sentence.

"Burn down?" the woman asked, puzzled. "I'm afraid I didn't get that last bit. It would be wise to finish what you had to say."

Duncan stared at the woman as if she were telling an unfunny joke. "I was just expressing surprise, but I couldn't finish."

"Well," the woman said carefully, "it's best to finish everything you say. Have you ever heard the phrase 'What you say is just as important as what you don't say'?"

The children nodded, for they remember hearing their parents obscurely mentioning that phrase when they were talking with them. It is important to understand this principle because if you start out by saying, "He's the brother of a man who—" and then you stop before finishing off with the words "you were supposed to meet at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill" because a mob of angry citizens cuts you off, the people you are talking to may never know the secrets hidden in the sentence you did not finish. I used to know a woman who knew certain secrets that I never found out until it was too late for the both of us, especially her. If I had known earlier in my life that sausages were very handy for storing tiny objects that are not meant to be eaten, I never would have nearly choked when I dined at the Anxious Clown after delivering people to their various destinations. Had Beatrice ended the phrase "When you go to the Anxious Clown," with "check the insides of the sausages and check for a tiny piece of parchment," then the calamity could have been avoided and I may not have swallowed a crucial piece of evidence.

"Anyway," the man said. "We had better get to looking for the sugar bowl. If Dewey was right, and his plan worked, the sugar bowl should be in one of these shelves. The only question is, which shelf is it in?"

Everyone started to wonder, but then they heard a noise. It wasn't a large noise, but it was a noise nonetheless. The Baudelaires, Quagmires, and the masked volunteers turned in the direction of the noise, and then out came a person who looked as confused as the orphans were. They had no idea where they were, and they looked as if they had fallen from a great height. The orphans believed that it was Hector, who had survived the fall after all, and ran over to see him close up. Strangely enough, the figure, who was concealed in the shadows, didn't want the orphans to see them, and so they ran.

The masked man shouted, "Whoever you are, stop running! There is no way you can escape, so it would be best to cooperate!"

The figure, however, didn't seem to want to cooperate, and starting running to escape the grasp of the orphans. The children, however, were in good physical condition, and so they were able to catch up to the person in no time. Klaus grabbed the person by the shoulder, and turned them around so he and the others could see them, but when he saw who it was, his heart nearly filled with all sorts of different emotions.

When someone you know and love abandons you, and then you don't hear anything about them, you tend to often wonder where they were. Amazingly enough, this young woman that Klaus had only met days ago was now right before his very eyes, which looked sympathetic, but angry, at the same time.

"What are you doing here?" Klaus asked ambiguously.

"I'm as mystified as you all are," said Fiona Widdershins. "I remember helping Fernald with the eagles, but…"

"You," Quigley said, looking at her with a feeling of pure loathing. Isadora and Duncan immediately recognized her, and reacted as if she were something putrid and horrible. "You."

"Wait a minute," Fiona gasped. "You're the Quagmires! What…"

The Quagmires started going for Fiona, but the Baudelaires held them back as if they were wild animals that had escaped from their cages. The triplets' eyes were filled with tears, just like when they found out that Olaf had burned their house and their parents. Somehow, they were under the impression that Fiona had done something, and it wasn't before long that they found out what.

"You killed Hector!" Duncan cried, his voice echoing throughout the chasm. "You and your brother killed an innocent man! How could you?"

Fiona reacted with her face half sorry and half self-satisfied. "What was done is done," she said solemnly, "and we can't change that."

"You didn't have to do it!" Isadora cried, her voice echoing throughout the chasm. "The Baudelaires were apparently under the impression that you were just a misunderstood noble person, but you're a murderer!"

Violet whispered into Isadora's ear, "Calm down, it's not worth it!"

Quigley then spat out, "You're just as bad as Count Olaf!"

Fiona looked shocked, and replied, "That is absurd! I'm not nearly as wicked as…"

"I'm afraid they're right, Miss," replied the male volunteer. The Baudelaires and Quagmires slightly jumped, only just remembering that he and the female volunteer were still there, looking for the sugar bowl. "No act of killing is unalike."

Fiona then replied, with a hint of superiority in her voice, "But Fernald fell over too! He dragged my brother down with him!"

The man looked very stern, but did not lose his temper. "Miss Poe…"

Fiona almost fell over. She started screaming as loud as she could, and wouldn't stop. The man put his hands over Fiona's mouth so no one anywhere above could hear them. Finally, the young woman stopped struggling, and they let go.

"Don't you _ever_," Fiona said furiously, "_EVER_ call me that name again! I don't even want to think about that incompetent idiot! Do you know how hard it was for me and my brother to grow up living with those imbeciles? We were almost glad when we had gotten lost in the…"

"But you respected Captain Widdershins more," the man interjected, clearly overlooking his comrade's principle of letting people finish what they had to say. "Why?"

"Why?" Fiona asked, her eyes still watering. "_He_ didn't spend all of his time tending to the littler ones and not paying any attention to us! _He_ didn't have an annoying cough that made it impossible for us to have a nice conversation for once! _He_ actually loved me like a real father! And _he_ didn't dare make a deal with Count Olaf!"

The orphans looked momentarily shocked, but Violet then said, "They didn't make a deal, Fiona. Your father was blackmailed."

Fiona looked at Violet in a sort of way that reminded the Baudelaires very much of the way Count Olaf looked at them. "I take it your friends told you? Well, that's it for the telling, I guess."

"What are you talking about?" Duncan asked.

Fiona finally laughed. She laughed long and hard and loud, and the orphans got more frightened by the second. "Didn't you tell them, Baudelaires? Didn't you tell them everything?"

The Quagmires looked confused, but the Baudelaires' hearts raced as they knew what Fiona was talking about. Even though they had decided to tell the Quagmires everything, they had left out the fact that they helped Count Olaf burn down the Caligari Carnival, helped cause Madame Lulu's death, and murdered Dewey Denouement. They had told the Quagmires that Count Olaf had done all those things, for fear that their friends might not respect them if they found out that the Baudelaires were killers.

Fiona continued to laugh, and then said, "Why don't you tell the Quagmires exactly how it is that noble people can do horrible things, hmm?"

"Baudelaires, what's she talking about?" Isadora asked, looking fearfully at her friends.

Klaus, by the way, had been silent this whole time. He had no idea how to express his emotion. On one hand, he was relieved to see Fiona, because in his heart he cared very much about her and she had kissed him before they had separated. On the other hand, he was disgusted that she would dare show her face after abandoning them, joining Count Olaf, and murdering a volunteer. He couldn't figure it out, but at the female Quagmire's question, Klaus could keep quiet no longer.

"We were…"

And then he stopped.The masked man, who was standing right behind Fiona, shook his head, indicating that Klaus not tell the Quagmires what had really happened, at least, not yet. But if he was going to get the triplets to trust them, he would have to think of another instance in which noble volunteers did something horrible, and think of it he did. But before he could voice his thoughts, the woman let out a cry.

"Oh, my! Come here! Come here!" she yelled, laughing and whooping at the same time.

The masked man and the Quagmires ran over to see what the woman was up to, but the Baudelaires remained with Fiona. There was a bit of an awkward moment between them, while they looked each other in the eye.

"What are you even doing here?" Sunny asked, staring Fiona straight in her eyes.

Fiona looked at Sunny like Count Olaf had done when they had been living at the count's house and she had said that they had no roast beef. The count had ended up lifting up Sunny, and Fiona looked like she would have, but she had better intuition than the count, and controlled herself.

"After Fernald fell, I flew away so the Quagmires wouldn't see me. I knew they might have seen me before, when I was behind him, and apparently they did. But I waited near some rocks until the coast was clear. Then I flew the eagle to dry land, where I got off and then walked a way. I eventually ended up at some hotel where everything was done backwards."

"The Hotel Denouement," Violet said, not bothering to say that they were there at the time.

Fiona continued, "It was in complete chaos. People were running everywhere, trying to escape the inferno. I saw a woman on the roof who was just standing there. She didn't even move. It's like she was welcoming the flames."

"Justice Srauss," the Baudelaires said aloud. Immediately Klaus asked, "Who else did you see?"

Fiona started to talk, but then stopped and glared at Violet. "Why are you so interested in what I have to say?"

Violet tripped over her own words as she tried to answer the mycologist, but it was like trying to explain the meaning of logic to Count Olaf. There would clearly be no point to it, because she knew the other person in both situations wouldn't understand.

The older girl then turned to Klaus and whispered, "And what about you, Klaus? Did you miss me?" Her voice sounded like that of a mother talking to her infant child, but Klaus kept his mouth shut. He refused to let Fiona take away what little respect he still had for her, but he knew that she was baiting him on purpose.

"Fine," she said, her eyes penetrating the Baudelaires like x-rays. "Clearly I'm wasting my time here. I'll see you."

And then, without warning, Fiona ran off into the same area she had entered from. Clearly there were secret passageways everywhere, and the Baudelaires were surprised that they were not that upset to see her go. Then they suddenly remembered where the others were, and ran over to see what had happened.

The man and the woman, as it turned out, were talking to someone else. It couldn't have been any of the Quagmires; the person was too tall. He was very tall and skinny, and his arms and legs stuck out at odd angles, as if he were made of drinking straws instead of flesh and bone. When he turned around, the Baudelaires' hearts raced, as the man also happened to have a nametag on his uniform, which read "Hotel Denoument MANAGER: Dewey."

"Oh, Baudelaires!" Dewey cried, and the orphans ran into his arms. Clearly, they had forgotten all about the fact that they had seen Dewey die before their very eyes, but it didn't matter to them. They hadn't even thought about the possibility of one of his brothers posing as him, but it didn't matter.

"Dewey!" Sunny cried, still embracing Dewey and not letting go.

"You don't know how happy I am to see you again, children!" Dewey said, clearly enthusiastic. "I know it must have been terrible for you today, but I promise we'll be able to help you get your answers."

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny turned to the Quagmires, who were grinning at them and standing right next to the masked volunteers. Suddenly, the two of them lifted their masks off their heads, and the Baudelaires nearly fainted in shock.

The phrase "to come back from the dead" isn't one that is used very commonly, and is mostly used in horror films where people see other people coming back from the dead. This being said, the only time you would be very likely to hear that phrase is during a showing of _Frankenstien_ or _The Mummy_. However, this phrase is sometimes used by people who are facing people who they assumed dead for a long time. The Baudelaires had said variations of this phrase to Quigley Quagmire, the first time they had met him. They knew it was impossible to actually come up from the dead, but the orphans were so surprised as to who were behind the masks, they almost believed it was true.

The man and woman were people the Baudelaires knew very well, for they had been the Baudelaires' guardians for an amount of time. The best guardians, as one of my associates tells me, are members of your family, and the Baudelaires knew that this was true. The man and woman came over and joined the Baudelaires in their embrace, and the Quagmires came in too. It seemed as if at that very moment, all of the turmoil and chaos, a phrase which here means "all of the bad things that were happening in the world," had stopped. You tend to channel out negative thoughts when you are in a group hug with people you know and love very, very much.

I am sorry to say that although this story may seem to have a happy ending, let me remind you that this is only the seventh chapter. There are still quite a few to go, and I can sadly tell you that this moment of happiness is soon disrupted, a time I know only too well. As many of you have by now guessed, Count Olaf will indeed return again, and will be the cause of this calamitous catastrophe, while deciding to kidnap a volunteer along the way.

Wishes, sadly, don't always come true. We can wish for ice cream cake, but we may not get it. We may wish for one more piece of paper, but we may not get it. We could also wish for world peace, happiness, no villainy, and/or all of the above, but we may end up not getting that wish either. But even though wishes rarely come true, it is good for people to make wishes, as they help to improve a person's self-esteem. This is why, at this moment that I am writing on this sticky note that I will be later transferring onto a sheet of paper, I am making one simple wish that in the future, no one will have to suffer any misfortunes like the Baudelaires did. Even though the orphans had their share of good times, the bad ones always overpowered them.

And so, as the Baudelaires, the Quagmires, Dewey Denouement, and these two people who had been watching over the children ever since they left embraced, nothing in the world seemed to matter to them anymore. All that was important was that they had each other. And then they all decided it was time to get down to work. So Dewey climbed back up the ladder, the Baudelaires followed suit, the Quagmires followed them, and taking up the rear were Dr. Montgomery Montgomery and Josephine Anwhistle.


End file.
